Sergei Diaghilev

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (/diˈæɡɪlɛf/;

Russian: Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев,
IPA: [sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavɫovʲɪtɕ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf];
31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1872 – 19
August 1929), usually referred to outside
Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian
art critic, patron, ballet impresario and
founder of the Ballets Russes, from which
many famous dancers and
choreographers would arise.
 Sergei Diaghilev

Born Sergei Pavlovich

Diaghilev
31 March 1872
Selishchi, Novgorod
Governorate, Russian
Empire

Died 19 August 1929

(aged 57)
 Venice, Italy
Resting place Isola di San Michele,
near Venice

Nationality Russian

Occupation Art critic, patron and

ballet impresario

Known for Founder of the Ballets

Russes

Relatives Dmitry Filosofov

(cousin)

Signature
Early life and career

Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev by Valentin Serov (1904)

Portrait of Serge Diaghilev with His Nanny, by Léon
Bakst (1906).

Sergei Diaghilev was born to a wealthy and

cultured family in Selishchi (Novgorod
Governorate), Russia; his father, Pavel
Pavlovich, was a cavalry colonel, but the
family's money came mainly from vodka
distilleries.[1] After the death of Sergei's
mother, his father married Elena
Valerianovna Panaeva, an artistic young
woman who was on very affectionate
terms with her stepson and was a strong
influence on him. The family lived in Perm
but had an apartment in Saint Petersburg
and a country estate in Bikbarda (near
Perm).[2] In 1890, Sergei's parents went
bankrupt, having for a long time lived
beyond their means, and from that time
Sergei (who had a small income inherited
from his mother) had to support the
family. After graduating from Perm
gymnasium in 1890, he went to the capital
to study law at St. Petersburg University,
but ended up also taking classes at the St.
Petersburg Conservatory of Music, where
he studied singing and music (a love of
which he had picked up from his
stepmother). After graduating in 1892 he
abandoned his dreams of composition
(his professor, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,
told him he had no talent for music).

During his years at University, Diaghilev's

cousin Dmitry Filosofov introduced him to
a circle of art-loving friends who called
themselves The Nevsky Pickwickians.[3]
They included Alexandre Benois, Walter
Nouvel, Konstantin Somov, and Léon
Bakst. Although not instantly received into
the group, Diaghilev was aided by Benois
in developing his knowledge of Russian
and Western art. In two years, he had
voraciously absorbed this new obsession
(even travelling abroad to further his
studies) and came to be respected as one
of the most learned of the group.

With financial backing from Savva

Mamontov (the director of the Russian
Private Opera Company)[4] and Princess
Maria Tenisheva, the group founded the
journal Mir iskusstva (World of Art). In
1899, Diaghilev became special assistant
to Prince Sergei Mikhaylovich Volkonsky,
who had recently taken over directorship
of all Imperial theaters. Diaghilev was
soon responsible for the production of the
Annual of the Imperial Theaters in 1900,
and promptly offered assignments to his
close friends: Léon Bakst would design
costumes for the French play Le Coeur de
la Marquise, while Benois was given the
opportunity to produce Alexander
Taneyev's opera Cupid's Revenge.

In 1900–1901 Volkonsky entrusted

Diaghilev with the staging of Léo Delibes'
ballet Sylvia, a favorite of Benois. The two
collaborators concocted an elaborate
production plan that startled the
established personnel of the Imperial
Theatres. After several increasingly
antagonistic differences of opinion,
Diaghilev in his demonstrative manner
refused to go on editing the Annual of the
Imperial Theatres and was discharged by
Volkonsky in 1901[5] and left disgraced in
the eyes of the nobility. At the same time,
some of Diaghilev's researchers hinted at
his homosexuality as the main cause for
this conflict. However, his homosexuality
had been well known long before he was
invited into the Imperial Theatres.
Ballets Russes
In 1905 he organized a huge exhibition of
Russian portrait painting at the Tauride
Palace in St. Petersburg, having travelled
widely through Russia for a year
discovering many previously unknown
masterpieces of Russian portrait art. In the
following year he took a major exhibition
of Russian art to the Petit Palais in Paris. It
was the beginning of a long involvement
with France. In 1907 he presented five
concerts of Russian music in Paris, and in
1908 mounted a production of
Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, starring
Feodor Chaliapin, at the Paris Opéra.

This led to an invitation to return the

following year with ballet as well as opera,
and thus to the launching of his famous
Ballets Russes. The company included the
best young Russian dancers, among them
Anna Pavlova, Adolph Bolm, Vaslav
Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina and Vera
Karalli, and their first night on 19 May 1909
was a sensation.

During these years Diaghilev's stagings

included several compositions by the late
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, such as the
operas The Maid of Pskov, May Night, and
The Golden Cockerel. His balletic
adaptation of the orchestral suite
Sheherazade, staged in 1910, drew the ire
of the composer's widow, Nadezhda
Rimskaya-Korsakova, who protested in
open letters to Diaghilev published in the
periodical Rech. Diaghilev commissioned
ballet music from composers such as
Nikolai Tcherepnin (Narcisse et Echo,
1911), Claude Debussy (Jeux, 1913),
Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, 1912),
Erik Satie (Parade, 1917), Manuel de Falla
(El Sombrero de Tres Picos, 1917), Richard
Strauss (Josephslegende, 1914), Sergei
Prokofiev (Ala and Lolli, 1915, rejected by
Diaghilev and turned into the Scythian
Suite; Chout, 1915 revised 1920; Le pas
d'acier, 1926; and The Prodigal Son, 1929);
Ottorino Respighi (La Boutique fantasque,
1919); Francis Poulenc (Les biches, 1923)
and others. His choreographer Michel
Fokine often adapted the music for ballet.
Diaghilev also worked with dancer and
ballet master Léonide Massine.
The artistic director for the Ballets Russes
was Léon Bakst. Together they developed
a more complicated form of ballet with
show-elements intended to appeal to the
general public, rather than solely the
aristocracy. The exotic appeal of the
Ballets Russes had an effect on Fauvist
painters and the nascent Art Deco style.
Coco Chanel is said to have stated that
"Diaghilev invented Russia for foreigners."
[Rhonda K. Garelick].

Perhaps Diaghilev's most notable

composer-collaborator, however, was Igor
Stravinsky. Diaghilev heard Stravinsky's
early orchestral works Fireworks and
Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed
enough to ask Stravinsky to arrange some
pieces by Chopin for the Ballets Russes. In
1910, he commissioned his first score
from Stravinsky, The Firebird. Petrushka
(1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913)
followed shortly afterwards, and the two
also worked together on Les noces (1923)
and Pulcinella (1920) together with
Picasso, who designed the costumes and
the set.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917,
Diaghilev stayed abroad. The new Soviet
regime, once it became obvious that he
could not be lured back, condemned him
in perpetuity as an especially insidious
example of bourgeois decadence. Soviet
art historians wrote him out of the picture
for more than 60 years.[6]

Diaghilev made Boris Kochno his secretary

in 1920 and staged Tchaikovsky's The
Sleeping Beauty in London in 1921; it was a
production of remarkable magnificence in
both settings and costumes but, despite
being well received by the public, it was a
financial disaster for Diaghilev and Oswald
Stoll, the theatre-owner who had backed it.
The first cast included the legendary
ballerina Olga Spessivtseva and Lubov
Egorova in the role of Aurora. Diaghilev
insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping
Princess. When asked why, he quipped,
"Because I have no beauties!" The later
years of the Ballets Russes were often
considered too "intellectual", too "stylish"
and seldom had the unconditional success
of the first few seasons, although younger
choreographers like George Balanchine hit
their stride with the Ballets Russes.

The start of the 20th century brought a

development in the handling of tonality,
harmony, rhythm and meter towards more
freedom. Until that time, rigid harmonic
schemes had forced rhythmic patterns to
stay fairly uncomplicated. Around the turn
of the century, however, harmonic and
metric devices became either more rigid,
or much more unpredictable, and each
approach had a liberating effect on
rhythm, which also affected ballet.
Diaghilev was a pioneer in adapting these
new musical styles to modern ballet. When
Ravel used a 54 time in the final part of his
ballet Daphnis and Chloe (1912), dancers
of the Ballets Russes sang Ser-gei-dia-ghi-
lev during rehearsals to keep the correct
rhythm.

Members of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

later went on to found ballet traditions in
the United States (George Balanchine) and
England (Ninette de Valois and Marie
Rambert). Ballet master Serge Lifar went
on a technical revival at the Paris Opera
Ballet, enhanced by Claude Bessy and
Rudolf Nureyev in the 1980s. Lifar is
credited for saving many Jewish and other
minority dancers from the Nazi
concentration camps during World War II.
After dancing with the Ballets Russes in
1925, Ruth Page emerged as a founder of
her own ballet troupes based in Chicago,
including the Chicago Opera Ballet.[7] [8] [9]

Personal life
Diaghilev's life and the Ballets Russes
were inextricably entwined. His most
famous lover was Nijinsky. However,
according to Serge Lifar, of all Diaghilev's
lovers, only Léonide Massine, who
replaced Nijinsky, provided him with "so
many moments of happiness or
anguish."[10] Diaghilev's other lovers
included Anton Dolin, Serge Lifar and his
secretary and librettist Boris Kochno. His
last lover, composer and conductor Igor
Markevitch, later married the daughter of
Nijinsky.[11]

Nijinsky's later bitter comments about

Diaghilev inspired a mention in W. H.
Auden's poem "September 1, 1939":
 What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

Diaghilev dismissed Nijinsky summarily

from the Ballets Russes after the dancer's
marriage in 1913. Nijinsky appeared again
with the company, but the old relationship
between the men was never re-
established; moreover, Nijinsky's magic as
a dancer was much diminished by
incipient mental illness. Their last meeting
was after Nijinsky's mind had given way,
and he appeared not to recognise his
former lover.

Diaghilev was known as a hard,

demanding, even frightening taskmaster.
Ninette de Valois, no shrinking violet, said
she was too afraid to ever look him in the
face. George Balanchine said he carried
around a cane during rehearsals, and
banged it angrily when he was displeased.
Other dancers said he would shoot them
down with one look, or a cold comment.
On the other hand, he was capable of great
kindness, and when stranded with his
bankrupt company in Spain during the
1914–18 war, gave his last bit of cash to
Lydia Sokolova to buy medical care for her
daughter. Alicia Markova was very young
when she joined the Ballets Russes and
would later say that she had called
Diaghilev "Sergypops" and he had said he
would take care of her like a daughter.
Dancers such as Alicia Markova, Tamara
Karsavina, Serge Lifar, and Lydia Sokolova
remembered Diaghilev fondly, as a stern
but kind father-figure who put the needs of
his dancers and company above his own.
He lived from paycheck to paycheck to
finance his company, and though he spent
considerable amounts of money on a
splendid collection of rare books at the
end of his life, many people noticed that
his impeccably cut suits had frayed cuffs
and trouser-ends. The film The Red Shoes
is a thinly disguised dramatization of the
Ballets Russes.
Death and legacy

Diaghilev's gravestone, Isola di San Michele, Orthodox

section, Venice, Italy (April, 2011)
Throughout his life, Diaghilev was severely
afraid of dying in water, and avoided
traveling by boat. He died of diabetes[12] in
Venice on 19 August 1929, and his tomb is
on the nearby island of San Michele, near
to the grave of Stravinsky, in the Orthodox
section.[13]

The Ekstrom Collection of the Diaghilev

and Stravinsky Foundation is held by the
Department of Theatre and Performance
of the Victoria and Albert Museum.[14]

References
1. Joan Acocella, "The Showman," The
New Yorker, September 20, 2010, p.
112.
2. Acocella, "The Showman," p. 113.
3. Stephen Walsh. Stravinsky: A Creative
Spring. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1999). p. 129.
4. Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the
Russian Traditions (Oxford University
Press, 1996), p. 493.
5. Prince Serge Volkonsky. My
reminiscences (in Russian)
 . Clive James, Cultural Amnesia (W. W.
Norton & Sons, 2007), p. 169.
7. Ruth Page – Early Architect of the
American Ballet a biographical essay
by Joellen A. Meglin on
www.danceheritage.org
. Ruth Page's Obituary in The New York
Times 9 April 1991 on
www.nytimes.com
 9. New York Public Library Archives –
Ruth Page Collection 1918–70 at the
New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts – Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, New York City, USA on
archives.nypl.org
10. Norton, Leslie "Léonide Massine and
the 20th Century Ballet", McFarland &
Co, 2004, p80
11. Roy, Sanjoy "Step-by-step guide to
dance: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes", The
Guardian, 11 December 2009 [1]
12. "Who was Sergei Diaghilev? What you
need to know about the trailblazer,
visionary and ballet pioneer" .
Telegraph.co. Retrieved 2017-03-31.
13. Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The
Burial Sites of More Than 14,000
Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle
Locations 12127-12128). McFarland &
Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle
Edition.
14. Victoria and Albert Museum London,
Department of Theatre and
Performance
Further reading
Buckle, Richard, Diaghilev, London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979
Scheijen, Sjeng, Working for Diaghilev,
Gent: BAI, 2005; exhibition catalogue of
the last major exhibition dedicated to
Diaghilev
Garafola, Lynn, Diaghilev's Ballets
Russes, New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989
Scheijen, Sjeng, Diaghilev: A life, Profile
Books, 2009
 Garelick, Rhonda K., Mademoiselle: Coco
Chanel And The Pulse Of History, New
York: Random House, 2015

Archival sources …

Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev

Online Collection and Serge Diaghilev /
Serge Lifar Collection at the Library of
Congress
Howard D. Rothschild collection on
Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev at
Houghton Library, Harvard University –
this collection is divided into four series:
I. Manuscripts and objects II.
Photographs and scrapbooks III.
Howard D. Rothschild papers IV.
Drawings and prints
Stravinsky-Diaghilev Foundation
collection at Houghton Library, Harvard
University
Ekstrom Collection: Diaghilev and
Stravinsky Foundation is held by the
Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and
Performance Department.
Serge Diaghilev correspondence , 1910–
29 (131 items) are housed at the New
York Public Library
 Sergei Diaghilev manuscript items listed
in ArchiveGrid

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to:

Sergei Diaghilev

Serge Diaghilev at the Encyclopædia

Britannica
"Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes "
Victoria and Albert Museum
"The Protean Master of the Ballets
Russes" Alastair MacCaulay, The New
York Times, 25 August 2010
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