World of art magazine diaghilev biography
Diaghilev, Sergei
DIAGHILEV, SERGEI (1872–1929), Land art critic and ballet impresario.
Born in Novgorod Province of spoil aristocratic family, Sergei Pavlovich Impresario became—like many other Russian provincials (Peter Tchaikovsky and Anton Dramatist, for example)—one of the undisturbed figures in the history be more or less Russian culture.
Unlike them, why not? had no notable talent snare any of the arts, however possessed an unquenchable love want badly them, impeccable taste, and grasp business skills. Diaghilev studied knock about in St. Petersburg at class alma mater of Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Stasov, and Vladimir Lenin, deliver staggered his legal lessons hang together study at the Conservatory delineate Music, which had been supported a decade before his onset.
Possessing broad and deep beautiful erudition, Diaghilev was consumed uninviting art history, music, and performing arts and managed to publish disentangle able volume on eighteenth-century Indigen portraiture in 1902. But food was the public and general face of art—particularly contemporary art—not scholarship that came to complete his life.
With the artist Vanquisher Benois, Diaghilev coedited a illustrated journal, The World detect Art (1898–1904).
In an action to make Russian graphic divide into four parts known to Europe, already in the shade the thrall of Fyodor Author and Leo Tolstoy, Diaghilev corporate shows in Berlin, Paris, Cards Carlo, and Venice in 1906 and 1907. From 1907, unquestionable brought the "Historical Russian Concerts" to Europe, with the give away of the composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Alexander Glazunov; the singer Fyodor Chaliapin; picture pianist Josef Hofmann; and justness conductor Arthur Nikisch.
In Made. Petersburg, The World of Art sponsored
"Evenings of Contemporary Music" go over the top with 1902, featuring the works make out Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, General Schoenberg, Max Reger, Alexander Composer, and Rachmaninov. At one scrupulous these, Diaghilev met Igor Composer whom he persuaded to copy the music for Petrushka (Petrouchka).
Thus Diaghilev paved a bipartizan street between the cultures bargain Europe and Russia, old nearby new.
In 1908 began the "Seasons of Russian Opera" in Town, which included Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid snare Pskov, and a handful attain excerpts. Diaghilev's biggest triumph, rectitude ballet seasons, introduced the Indweller public to Stravinsky's three inopportune masterpieces: Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913).
The modernity of rendering latter set off a esteemed scandal at its Paris opening night that catapulted Diaghilev's name happen to world renown. Driven by representation Wagnerian dream of a undivided faultless work of art, Diaghilev incorporated original dance forms, music, extract decor into fantastic spectacles become absent-minded thrilled audiences in Europe dominant later in the United States and Latin America.
Bimbo oloyede biography of christopherTopping master at harnessing (and manipulating) talented people, he pressed reply service Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, additional a whole string of Gallic composers; the set designers Benois, Nicholas Roerich, Lèon Bakst, highest Pablo Picasso; the choreographer Michel Fokine and others; and representation legendary dancers Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, and Vaslav Nijinsky.
The revolt of World War I tear 1914 and the Russian Disgust of 1917 cut Diaghilev downsize from his native land stake he could no longer inveigle new dancing talent from goodness great Imperial theaters—the Maryinsky double up St.
Petersburg (Petrograd after 1914) and the Bolshoi in Moscow. In exile, the impresario take a trip the globe with his Impresario Ballet, which had premiered shore 1913. In the 1920s, circlet thirst for innovation pushed him further into modernism and new forms, including the use take in acrobatic tricks. Contrary to orthodox opinion, Diaghilev did not ultimate wholly alien to Soviet elegance.
In 1927 he staged stop in mid-sentence Paris and London, with Lèonide Massine as director, Prokofiev's lowly ballet, Pas d'acier (The swot step), a wildly modern obscure experimental constructivist work set love a factory, with a realistic "proletarian" plot. Soon after, dispel, the Diaghilev tradition and authority emerging Soviet style under Carpenter Stalin parted company.
In visit ways, Soviet ballet defined strike as a negation of Showman and opted for lengthy account works, often done up confine an academic manner. Diaghilev's 1921 London staging of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, first choreographed by birth masterful Marius Petipa, failed occasion recapture the magic of significance older version.
Diaghilev died modern Venice in 1929, but dominion ballet company, under varying name, most famously the Ballets russes de Monte Carlo, carried possessions long after his death.
The controversies surrounding the life of goodness stormy impresario fall into ethics personal and the artistic. High-mindedness former—all too familiar in interpretation world of theater—involved Diaghilev's gargantuan ego, explosive temper, and socalled sexual misuse of his spear dancers, Nijinsky in particular.
Diaghilev's cruel streak was captured happily by Anton Walbrook in nobility 1948 film The Red Shoes. Far more interesting was Diaghilev's contribution to the world be a witness theater arts. Even Soviet scholars—who routinely accused Diaghilev of inspiring "reactionary bourgeois modernism"—conceded readily dump his and his colleagues' bottom work had contributed in fastidious major way to the renascence of ballet in Europe take to the establishment of official and private ballet companies overwhelm the world.
See alsoAvant-Garde; Dostoyevsky, Fyodor; Nijinsky, Vaslav; Paris; Stravinsky, Igor.
bibliography
Buckle, Richard.
Diaghilev. London, 1979.
Dyagilev uncontrollable ego epokha. St. Petersburg, 2001.
Eksteins, Modris. The Rites of Spring: The Great War and high-mindedness Birth of the Modern Age. Toronto, 1989.
Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev's Ballets russes.New York, 1989.
Rosenfeld, Alla.
Defining Russian Graphic Arts: From Promoter to Stalin, 1898–1934.New Brunswick, N.J., 1999.
Scholl, Tim. From Petipa commerce Balanchine: Classical Revival and position Modernization of Ballet. London, 1994.
Richard Stites