Diaghilev's Creation of the Ballets Russes

In the Summer of 1909 Russian art critic and ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) began to produce a series of spectacular and lavish presentations on the stages of Paris (and later London) which was to bring international fame to then little known Russian ballet dancers such as Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky.

This sensational series billed as The Russian Seasons took Paris by storm, completely galvanising audiences’ perceptions of ballet and ran until the outbreak of the First World War. It included much specially commissioned music by European composers including Russian Igor Stravinsky and also led to the formation of the Ballets Russes. Major personalities involved in that company appear in the Culture souvenir sheet produced by Russia to mark the Millennium.

2000 Russia issue featuring the masked figure of dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokine and above the stamp ballerinas Tamara Karsavina and Lydia Sokolova, dancing respectively in Weber’s The Spectre of the Rose (1911) and Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring (1913). At the centre of the stamp is the graceful figure of Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) taken from a poster advertising the 1909 season.

Pavlova was the prima ballerina of the time and appears on this 1982 Monaco issue.

Anna Pavlova had entered the Russian Imperial Ballet School aged ten to be trained by the great Marius Petipa as a petite schoolgirl and throughout her professional career captivated audiences with her sylph-like figure. Pavlova struck out on her own from Diaghilev’s company in 1911 much to his anger, also taking several other starlets with her to international fame and becoming a particular favourite of the New York Met. Pavlova’s tours de force were performing as The Dying Swan choreographed by Fokine to Saint-Saens music from The Carnival of the Animals and in the title role of Adolph Adam’s 1841 ballet Giselle.

Her virtuoso partner Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950) appears twice, on the right as a slave in Rimsky- Korsakov’s Sheherazade and left beside composer Stravinsky dressed in his Petrushka costume. Nijinsky, of Polish-Russian origin, was one of Diaghilev’s greatest proteges and had a long sexual relationship with him but was sacked from the Ballets Russes when he married in 1913.

Arguably the greatest male ballet dancer of all time, Nijinsky appears on a 1966 Monaco issue (above) in the role of Petrushka, the puppet youth who comes to life. The design of this stamp shows the dancer en pointe, a very exacting skill which he excelled in and which is demanded routinely of ballerinas but is quite exceptional in male dancers. Another of his abilities was his amazing leaping, apparently hanging in the air. Also shown in the stamp is René Blum, choreographer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company of Monte Carlo who was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1943.

The shadowy figure extreme left in the design is “puppet master” Diaghilev, who had studied music under Rimsky-Korsakov but had not much impressed the venerable composer and who first came to Paris in 1906 promoting Russian art and artefacts. Two years later he mounted a production of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov at The Paris Opera starring Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin. The following year Diaghilev began the project that was to develop into the company known as The Ballets Russes.

1977 Guinea issue featuring the Russian ballet.

In that first Paris season, when the Imperial Ballet dancers were effectively on a working holiday, amongst the five pieces staged by Diaghilev at the rather rundown Chatelet Theatre and set by Fokine originally for the Maryinsky Ballet Company in St Petersburg were dances such as the Polovtsian set from Prince Igor by Borodin and the Chopin-inspired ballet Les Syphides.

The second Paris season in June 1910 moved from the Théâtre du Chatelet to the imposing Théâtre National de l’Opéra. The programme included the well established music of Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Shéhérazade written in 1888 and newly choreographed as a ballet by Fokine, which provided the Paris audiences with popular and comfortable oriental themes. In complete contrast was the stunning and strident music of The Firebird, which premiered in June, built around a traditional Russian folktale by novice composer Igor Stravinksy. These two ballets and Stravinsky’s Petrushka (1911) are commemorated in a 1995 Russian issue which includes a label showing Fokine beneath whose portrait is a very detailed stamp depicting The Firebird, created by ballerina Tamara Karsavina.

Mikhail Fokine (1880-1942) was himself a celebrated choreographer and dancer but never really settled into Diaghilev’s project, being concerned about and envious of the influence that Nijinksy appeared to have over the impresario. They parted company in 1912 and Fokine moved to Scandinavia and then the United States, taking full American citizenship ten years before his death.

After two trial seasons, Diaghilev deemed the time right to officially form his company and 1911, the first year of the “Ballet Russes”, premiered further Fokine creations Le Spectre de la Rose (using music written by Weber a century before) and Stravinsky’s enigmatic Petrushka. The former piece opened in the Theatre de Monte Carlo in April – The Ballet Russes was to be a touring company and later at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris in June of that year.