This website is related to the Curtis Institute of Music's 2010–11 all-school study, the Paris Project.

Ballets Russes

A Stage for Artists

Ballet found a home on the stage of the Paris Opéra, both within opera productions and on its own. As in opera, it embraced French-born and foreign composers, Neo-Classicism and modernism, and—particularly through scenic and costume designs by the likes of Picasso and Matisse—Cubism and Surrealism. Plus, ballet was infused with the aesthetic ideas of Jean Cocteau. The principal impresario was the Russian Sergei Diaghilev, with his company, Ballets Russes. Among his choreographers were Bronislava Nijinska and Georges Balanchine.

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

Before World War I, Diaghilev found success in Paris by drawing on his Russian roots with works such as Boris Godunov, followed by a blend of opera and ballet. His work attracted artists as designers and contemporary composers, including Igor Stravinsky, with whom he would collaborate on L'ousieau de fue (The Firebird), Petrushka, and, in 1914, Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), which sparked a riot.

The Ballets Russes: Costume Exhibit video, including footage of the troupe (National Gallery of Australia, 10:14)

Repertoire

After the war, new works emerged alongside familiar repertoire. Diaghilev's company, Ballets Russes, returned to Paris at the end of 1919 with a program that included a world premiere ballet to a suite from Stravinsky's opera Le Chant du rossignol. Henri Matisse designed the scenery and costumes, invoking the Ming Dynasty setting of the original tale by Hans Christian Anderson. Choreography was by Léonide Massine. In 1925 Balanchine joined the Ballets Russes and created fresh choreography for the same composition, reducing Matisse's costumes and props.

WATCH: Le Chant du rossignol Ballet Reconstruction (1999) from Millicent Hodson (26:20).

Diaghilev's other Paris productions in the 1920s, before his death in 1929 in Venice, were these:

Stravinsky, Pulcinella (1920)

Based on music attributed to the early 18th-century composer Pergolesi, the score twists the ear with the anachronism of a contemporary sound through aggressive rhythms and dissonances.
LISTEN: Stravinsky, Pulcinella, performed by the Curtis Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Joel Smirnoff, presented by Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (Instant Encore, 41:34)

Prokofiev, Chout (The Buffoon, 1921)

A ballet of comic Russian peasants, it used clashing, flickering contrasts of color, according to one critic.

Stravinsky, Les Noces (The Wedding, 1923)

Stravinsky used the terms "ritualistic and non-personal" to describe the concepts behind this ballet, which was performed to music from four pianos.

Poulenc, Les Biches (The Does, 1924)

Poulenc mischievously offered some lighter fare of French dances.

Sauguet, La Chatte (The Cat, 1927)

Balanchine loosely choreographed this work on an Aesop fable about a man, his mouse-eating cat, and his wish that the cat become a woman.

Prokofiev, Le Pas d'acier (The Steel Step, 1927)

Modern Russian life came to the stage in this ballet, choreographed by Massine with intentional clumsiness and designed by Georgi Yakulov.

Stravinsky, Apollon musagète (1928)

Stravinsky harkens back to 19th-century musical characteristics, this time in a genuine way that is heard as sincere.

More on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Online

Russian Ballet History website

New York Times slideshow from "A Legend of Ballet," a New York Public Library exhibit on Diaghilev

PRINT AND ELECTRONIC RESOURCES ON INTERWAR PARIS AND THE ARTS

Grove Music Online, The Oxford Companion to Music, and The Oxford Dictionary of Music

Jackson, Jeffrey H., Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham: Duke UP, 2003)

Mann, Carol, Paris: Artistic Life in the Twenties and Thirties (London: Laurence King, 1996)

Nichols, Roger, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917–1929 (Berkeley: UCalifornia P, 2002)

Shack, William A., Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars (Berkeley: UCalifornia P, 2001)