Serge Pavlovitch de Diaghilev is a Russian business manager born the March 31st 1872 (March 19th according to the old Russian calendar) with Selischi (Ca 45 km of Novgorod) and dead the August 19th 1929 with Venice.

Born in an aristocratic family he studies the right and arts.

In 1905 it assembles to Saint-Pétersbourg an exposure of Russian painting of portraits which it presents the following year with others to the Petit Palais with Paris. It is the beginning of a great implication with France. In 1907 it organizes five concerts of Russian music there and the following year it presents to the Opéra Garnier the Boris Godounov of Moussorgski, with in the high-speed motorboat Feodor Chaliapin.

Its success encourages it to return with famous the Russian Ballets, accompanied by Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinski, which creates sensation at the time of the first, the May 19th 1909.

Diaghilev places order of ballet musics near type-setters like Claude Debussy ( Jeux , 1913), Maurice Ravel ( Daphnis and Chloé , 1912), Erik Satie ( Parade , 1917), Richard Strauss ( Josephs-Legend , 1914), Sergueï Prokofiev ( Ala and Lolly , rejected by Diaghilev and turned in Scythian Suite , and Chout , 1915), Ottorino Respighi ( the odd Shop , 1918), Francis Poulenc ( the Hinds , 1923) and ofothers.

Among the choreographers which collaborated with Diaghilev within the Russian Ballet, let us quote Michel Fokine, Léonide Massine, Vaslav Nijinski, Bronislava Nijinska or George Balanchine.

Many decorations and costumes of the spectacles of the Russian Ballet are signed of the painter Leon Bakst, with whom Diaghilev was in contact since 1898 when they founded with Alexandre Benois the group of avant-garde “World of art” ( Mir Iskusstva ). They develop together a more complicated form of ballet and Scénographie, with animations intended to like an audience larger than the aristocracy. The exotic call of the Russian Ballet had an effect on the painters fauvists and the birth of the style Art Déco.

The type-setter who is probably most famous for his collaboration is Igor Stravinski. Diaghilev heard its tests Fireworks and fantastic Scherzo , and was impressed so much that he asked Stravinski to adapt parts of Frederic Chopin (for the ballet the Sylphids ). In 1910 it ordered to him the Bird of fire , Petrouchka in 1911 and the Rite of Spring in 1913, like Pulcinella in 1920 and the Weddings in 1923.

The following years, the presentations continue to have success but financial balance becomes precarious. The spectacles become, with the taste of the public, too “intellectuals” and complicated.

Several members of the Russian Ballet became references of choreographic art in Occident, like George Balanchine with the the United States, Serge Lifar in France and Ninette de Valois and Marie Rambert in Great Britain.

See too

The Serge Diaghilev Foundation