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What were the other ballets on the bill in 1913 premiere of Rite of Sp


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According to Serge Grigoriev the programme began with Les Sylphides, then came Sacre and the programme was completed with Le Spectre de la Rose and the Polovtsian Dances. Reason for this programming was, he says, that the company's stars - Karsavina, Nijinsky and Bolm, would all appear during the evening.

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What a good question -- that has actually never crossed my mind!

The transition from Sylphides to Sacre would have been really something. (not to mention from Sacre to Spectre -- I wonder was Nijinsky performing in it that evening?)

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In the 2009 film " Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky", they reenact the Rite of Spring debut with part of that performance, audience reaction and backstage preparations/actions/reactions. From what I've read, the movie's interpretation of events was fairly accurate. Watching that play out gave me chills. I can't remember if it was Stravinsky or Nijinsky (definitely one of them) who said to the dancers and musicians "just keep going....".

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What a good question -- that has actually never crossed my mind!

The transition from Sylphides to Sacre would have been really something. (not to mention from Sacre to Spectre -- I wonder was Nijinsky performing in it that evening?)

According to Thomas Forest Kelly's First Nights: Five Musical Premieres, Nijinksy danced the waltz in Sylphides with Karasavina, and danced with her again in Spectre.

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What a good question -- that has actually never crossed my mind!

The transition from Sylphides to Sacre would have been really something. (not to mention from Sacre to Spectre -- I wonder was Nijinsky performing in it that evening?)

According to Thomas Forest Kelly's First Nights: Five Musical Premieres, Nijinksy danced the waltz in Sylphides with Karasavina, and danced with her again in Spectre.

And people say there's not enough drama in a mixed rep program...

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The account of that evening, May 29, 1913, by Modris Eksteins in the first chapter of his Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age is brilliant. He has a historian's cold eye for exaggeration, and places the event in the history of modernism. Accounts were written by Gabriel Astruc, Romola Nijinska, Igor Stravinsky, Misia Sert, Marie Rambert, Bronislava Nijinska, Jean Cocteau, Carl Van Vechten and Valentine Gross. Eksteins points out that these all vary on significant details, and that not one of them mention the other ballets performed that evening. Karsavina made no comment about it in Theatre Street, perhaps not surprisingly as it up-staged her performances that evening. Jean Cocteau admitted "that he was more concerned with 'subjective' than 'objective' truth; in other words with what he felt, what he imagined, not with what actually occurred." "That opening night of Le Sacre represents a milestone in the development of 'modernism', modernism as above all a culture of the sensational event, through which art and life both become a matter of energy and are fused as one." (Eksteins).

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Count Harry Kessler gives a good and spirited report of the evening in a recently published translation of his diaries. At the time Kessler had been working with Richard Strauss and Nijinsky on a ballet called The Legend of Joseph.

Previously, in Spring 1911, Kessler noted that he had gone to see Spectre de la Rose, with Nijinsky as the spirit of the roses – who "overshadowed the pretty Karsavina completely." ... "Even Rilke says that Nijinsky was perfect, like things that transpire inside oneself."

Paris. May 29, 1913 Thursday.

In the evening the premiere of The Rite of Spring. A completely new choreography and music. Nijinsky’s dancing style as different from Fokine’s as Gauguin’s from —— [Delacroix crossed out]. A thoroughly new vision, something never before seen, enthralling, persuasive, a new kind of wildness, both un-art and art at the same time. All forms laid waste and new ones emerging from the chaos.

The public, the most elegant house I have ever seen in Paris – aristocracy, diplomats, the demimonde – was from the beginning restless, laughing, whistling, making jokes. Here and there someone stood up. Stravinsky, who sat with his wife behind us, raced outside like one possessed after scarcely five minutes.

Suddenly a stentorian voice cried out from the gallery, “Okay, whores of the Sixteenth [Arrondissement, that of the elegant world], are you going to shut up soon!”

The reply came from a loge: “Voilà, those who are ripe to be annexed!”

At the same time D’Annunzio and Debussy in Astruc’s loge got into a quarrel with a neighboring loge, screaming into their faces, “What a bunch of imbeciles!” Now the commotion became general. Astruc was heard crying, “Wait for the end, you can whistle afterward!” …

And above this crazy din there continued the storm of salvos of laughter and scornful clapping while the music raged and on the stage the dancers, without flinching, danced fervently in a prehistoric fashion. At the end of the performance, the monde and the demimonde went at it until a frenetic applause triumphed so that Stravinsky and Nijinsky had to come on stage and take repeated bows.

We went to Larue’s and had a late supper, the usual crowd and in addition, [Oscar] Fried, Tata Golubeff, the countess Souboff...

Finally at three a.m. Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Bakst, Cocteau, and I took a taxi and did a wild tour through the city at night, looking almost dead under the moonlight, Bakst waving his handkerchief on a walking stick like a flag, Cocteau and I high on the roof of the automobile, Nijinsky in tails and a top hat, silently and happily smiling to himself. The dawn was breaking as the wild, merry party set me down at my Tour d’Argent.

At Gallica.fr there's a replica of a theater journal, Comœdia Illustré, from June 1913 with quite wonderful illustrations and some not terribly scandalized reviews of The Rite of Spring – as well as Jeux, Khovanchina, and Carnaval [begins about twelves pages in].

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8415121d/f1.image.r=ballets%20russes%20sacre.langEN

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