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• Performance
• Classical
• Modern Era

Few non-performing or non-composing figures have had as much effect on the development of twentieth-century music as Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929). Born in Russia, he became enamoured early of Russian national music, memorizing Ruslan i Lyudmila (‘Ruslan and Ludmilla’, 1842) by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–57) as a child. Though he studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), Diaghilev abandoned it to concentrate ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

the Opéra-Comique 1905 Premiere of La mer; composition of the Images begins 1908 Marries singer Emma Bardac 1910 Diagnosed with cancer; first volume of Préludes published 1913 Ballet Jeux for Diaghilev completed 1915 Final volume of Etudes completed 1918 Dies from cancer, Paris Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Major Operas | Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

by his teacher and by Debussy, he wrote two short orchestral works, Feu d’artifice (‘Fireworks’, 1908) and Scherzo fantasque (‘Fantastic Scherzo’, 1909), which attracted the attention of Serge Diaghilev, who was busy preparing his second season of Russian ballet in Paris. Stravinsky was asked first to orchestrate two pieces by Chopin for a new production of Les Sylphides ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

written during his lifetime, even if these extremes stemmed from his refusal to associate himself with one particular style. Influence of Russian Folklore Three ballets written for impresario-producer Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes are among the most important in the repertoire. Inspired by French Impressionism, both The Firebird and Petrushka are replete with Russian folklore references, yet ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1844–1908, Russian In spite of being the most prolific of contributors to Russian opera, Rimsky-Korsakov’s stage works have never found a solid place in the mainstream international repertoire. As a youth, Rimsky-Korsakov was encouraged and taught by Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (1837–1910). The young composer displayed an undoubted mastery of orchestration and a keen ear for evocative harmony, ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

composing as a child, and had his first success (with his First Piano Concerto, which he played himself) while still a student. He soon attracted the attention of Diaghilev, who commissioned a score (Ala and Lolly) for his Ballets Russes, but rejected it: Prokofiev had imitated Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring too closely. In rapid succession he ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

Karamazov (1879–80). After the assassination of the Tsar in 1881, Russian nationalism moved from the overtly historical to folk, mythical and rural subjects. These were greatly enriched by Diaghilev, whose World of Art magazine influenced not only such artists as Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, but was also the impulse behind the plots and designs of the ...

• Classical
• Modern Era

period. A Short History | Modern Era | Classical Styles and Forms | Modern Era | Classical Arts & Culture | Paris | Modern Era | Classical Performance | Serge Diaghilev | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Opera
• Modern Era

adhere to the verismo (heightened realism) tradition. The Ballets Russes Ballet plunged headlong into the new sound, embracing theatricality and daring the Ballets Russes and their producer, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), to commission Igor Stravinsky’s (1882–1971) compositions The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The riots provoked by The Rite of Spring are legendary, yet ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Modern Era

Europe, Spain in particular. Russian artistic culture was also very much in evidence, especially with the productions brought to the city by the Ballets Russes and their impresario Diaghilev after 1909. The Great Exhibitions of 1878, 1889 and 1900 also exposed Parisians to Far Eastern cultures, and Debussy was impressed by the Javanese gamelan he heard there ...

• Performance
• Classical
• Early Romantic

and Paganini that virtuosity can be elevated to the status of great art. As Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) later remarked: ‘A difficulty overcome is a thing of beauty. Performance | Serge Diaghilev | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Performance
• Classical
• Modern Era

Stravinsky’s third ballet for Diaghilev was no piece of naive primitivism: he worked painstakingly with an expert on ancient Slavonic customs, Nikolay Roerich, to ensure the scenario’s ethnographic accuracy, and worked a number of published folk melodies into the score. Of those many already embodied the irregularities of metre and accentuation that The Rite exploits to such violent ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Modern Era

century, Debussy’s influential musical innovations and explicitly anti-Wagnerian stance made Paris the centre of post-Wagnerian modernity. This was confirmed in the early modern period by the arrival of Serge Diaghilev in 1907, with Russian art exhibitions, concerts and, later, ballets. The last, with the works of Stravinsky as much as anything, made Paris the ...