Igor Stravinsky and Ida Rubinstein

Lynn Garafola

Although Igor Stravinsky created only two works for Ida Rubinstein, he and she hada pro­fessional relationship that spanned twenty years. It began in I9I7 with Antony and Cleopa­tra, a collaboration that failed to materialize; continued in I928 with Le Baiser de la Fee, a ma­jor addition to the repertory of Stravinsky's music for dance; climaxed in I934 with Perse­phone, one of his very greatest works of the I930S; and ended in I938 with another failed collaboration, the ballet Tobit.

Two more unlikely collaborators can hard­ly be imagined: Rubinstein, the darling of decadents; Stravinsky, the hero of modern­ism. Both were Russian. Both tasted fame in the early, heady days of the Ballets Russes -Rubinstein as the femme fatale of Cteopatre and Schehirazade, Stravinsky as the composer of Firebird. Rubinstein earlywentherown way, pursuing a career as an actress and a mecene on the grand scale, a patron of spectacles of which she was the sole star. Stravinsky stuck with the Ballets Russes; he wrote Petrouchka and te Sacre du Printemps, a work that pushed ballet so far beyond Petipa as to challenge its very identity.

Rubinstein was rich, very rich - the daugh­ter of a banker from Kharkov. She was also Jewish, but a convert to Orthodoxy, like so many other wealthy Russian Jews. Stravinsky, by contrast, was middle class (although by blood he belonged to the gentry), a child of the Imperial Theaters, where his father had been a noted singer. Although married, Rubinstein lived the life of a hetaera, a millionaire's mis­tress and sometime lesbian lover. Stravinsky was a husband and pere de famil/e, the father of an ever-growing brood of children. Long be­fore World War I, both had abandoned Russia to take up residence abroad. Stravinsky lost what little family money he had in I9I7, when

the Soviets nationalized private property. Ru­binstein, however, weathered the revolution in style; long before, her assets had followed her to the West.

The Rubinstein who wanted Stravinsky to write the introduction and incidental pieces for Antony and Cleopatra in I917 had come a long way since I9IO, when she had wowed Parisian audiences in the title role of Cleopatre and as Zobeide in Schehirazade. These were mimed roles, and although Rubinstein had trained as an actress in both the Moscow and St. Peters­burg branches of the Imperial Theater School, it was only after leaving Diaghilev that the French discovered her voice.

In I9II she appeared as the homosexual hero in Gabriele D'Annunzio's five-act "mys­tery," Le Martyre de Saint-Sebastien, the first of several works by the Italian poet and play­wrightthatshewould commission, stage, and star in. Martyre was a scandal in Catholic cir­cles; itwas condemned by the Church (a saint impersonated by a woman and a Jewish wom­an at that!), but it made Rubinstein a celebri­ty and a force to be reckoned with in the the­atrical world. She spent money like water; there were opulent sets and costumes by Leon Bakst, music by Debussy, and dozens upon dozens of performers.

It was a gorgeous spectacle, as were all her productions before the war - Helene de Sparte (I9I2), a four-act tragedy by the Belgian writer Emile Verhaeren; Oscar Wilde's Salome (I9I2); and another D'Annunzio epic, La Pisanella ou la Mort Paifumie (Pisanella, or The Perfumed Death; I913), which was staged by the fabled director Vsevolod Meyerhold, brought for the occasion from St. Petersburg. Cosmopol­itan to a fault (try to imagine the Russian­speaking Meyerhold directing a French cast), Rubinstein's genre-defYing spectacles were a throwback to the aestheticism of the I890s, a vision of decadent luxe et volupte that belongs with Huysmans' A. Rebours and the paintings of Gustave Moreau.

Theatrical life came to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of World War I. Fancy hotels like the Ritz were turned into hospitals, poets and

© 2004 Lynn Garafola

painters joined the army, and wealthy women raised money for the Red Cross. Rubinstein threw herself into the war effort as well. "The famous Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein has fitted an ambulance of thirty beds at the Ho­tel Bristol especially to care for the English wounded," reported the New York Sun in Octo­ber 1914. "She spends each night going in her automobile and bringing wounded soldiers from the field of battle.'"

She donned the nunlike costume of a Euro­pean "sister" and was photographed at the bedside of the wounded. 2 There was talk of her coming to New York, and rumors that Max Rabinoff had hired her as a replacement for Anna Pavlova, who had left his Boston Grand Opera Company and accepted an engagement at the New York Hippodrome}

Rubinstein chose to stay put. On the few occasions she performed, it was always for charity and to support the war effort. Thus, in 1916, for a lecture by Comte Robertde Montes­quiou sponsored by the Paris city council, she donned "a long black dress with sleeves of sil­ver" to recite some of her friend's "war ele­gies."4

The following year at the Paris Opera, for a "Matinee Extraordinaire" to raise money for the Romanian Red Cross, she appeared in act 4 of Racine's Phedre. The setting, in Minoan style, and the costumes were by Bakst, the de­signer par excellence of Rubinstein's and Di­aghilev's exotic visions. Butthe choice of play, a masterpiece of the classical French reperto­ry that dated to the era of Louis XN, and the company in which Rubinstein now found her­self (Mary Garden was singing excerpts from Massenet's Thai's and Carlotta Zambelli was dancing the ballet act from the operaLeCobzar) indicated to what extent she had "arrived."s Although it would be nearly twenty years be­fore Rubinstein became a French citizen, the World War I made the Russian-Jewish cos­mopolitan of the prewar years a member of the French cultural polity.

Even before Phedre was over, Rubinstein was deep in another project. This was Antony and Cleopatra, which she had commissioned Andre

SUMMER 2004

Gide to translate. "I dive into the translation of Antony and Cleopatra with rapture," he wrote in his diary on April 21, 1917.6 By November the play was finished, and he read it to Rubin­stein at the home of Bakst, who was to do the sets and costumes.?

It was Bakst, moreover, who in June broached to Stravinsky the idea of writing music for the play, "specifically theintroduc­tion and incidental pieces ... much in the way that Debussy wrote for her in Saint-Sebastien."g Stravinsky appeared to be interested, but in­sisted that Bakst come to Morges as he could not go to Paris.

Bakst, however, was busy, and Rubinstein, who typically communicated by letter and of­ten through third parties, did not press him to leave. Stravinsky stuck to his guns. "If you want me to compose music for Shakespeare absolutely indispensable you come here," he cabled Bakst in early July. "Categorically refuse to discuss questions in writing." Bakst replied almost immediately: "In three weeks Andre Gide will come to see yoU."9 Far from allaying the composer's anxieties, the im­pending visit only multiplied them. How could he finish the music in six months, when Gide was not expected until August.

Since he could not "take a direct part" in the production, he wrote, "I must talk seriously with either you or Gide," about "how you in­tend to present Shakespeare. If you are going to put him on in the ... light spirit and sump­tuous settings of Saint-Sebastien or He/en oj Sparta, then I definitely cannot imagine a link between such a treatment ... and the music I would be interested in writing. I do not feel ca­pable of composing 'mood' music (like that of Debussy's Saint-Sebastien)."10

Bakst's reply, written three weeks later, re­veals the fault lines that modernism had opened within the Ballets Russes. He notes the "recent, bitter failure" of Contes Russes, de­signed by Mikhail Larionov in neoprimitivist style, or as Bakst put it, "with a smattering of ultimate Modernism .... If Shakespeare's masterpiece had to be portrayed in the same 'progressive' terms, obviously I would have to

85

do without the honor and pleasure of your col­laboration."ll Meanwhile, Gide had reached Diablerets, Stravinsky's mountain retreat in the Alps, and after several days drew up a plan for ten pieces of incidental music: overture, "Hymn to the Caesars," "Glorification of Cle­opatra," "Song of the Oboes," "First Entr' acte," "Fanfares," "Triumphant Entry of Cae­sar," "March in the Camp of Caesar," "Second Entr'acte," and music for Cleopatra's death.12

In the months that followed, Bakstand Stra­vinsky kept trying - unsuccessfully - to meet. The composer continued to argue for a mod­ernist approach to the play, with the charac­ters in modern dress. This, Bakstin a long let­ter dated October 25, informed Stravinsky "had been unanimously rejected" by Rubin­stein and Gide as well as himself. "Itis better," he added, "to call off the production if you adopt a selfish attitude toward it and expect it to serve the interests of just one or two of the many participants .. .. [N] ot for anything will I see the show ruined."'3 Within a week Stra­vinsky had agreed to do the music. He asked for 25,000 Swiss francs, in five installments, and set to work. However, the contract nego­tiations stalled, and although Stravinsky moderated his demands, the usually generous Rubinstein withdrew her offer.'4

Thus ended Stravinsky's involvement in the project. The play itself did not come to the stage until 1920, when it opened at the Palais Garnier for five gala performances. By then, it had become an all-French production, with music by Florent Schmitt and sets and cos­tumes by Jacques Dresa. Bakst, meanwhile, had fallen into a deep depression. As Proust wrote to a friend some weeks before the pre­miere, "How sad to learn - if the information is correct - that Bakst, who did that inspired Seheherazade . . . will be put away and for an ill­ness which is bound to last several years (gen­eral paralysis). There [is] not much better news of Nijinsky.'''5 Gide's translation of An­tony and Cleopatra was published in La Nouvelle Revue Franraise in 1924. ,6

* In late 1927, as Stravinsky was finishing Apol-

86

Ion Musagete, he received a proposal from Ru­binstein "to compose a ballet for her reperto­ry.'''7 In the intervening decade Rubinsteinhad become a grande dame of the French theater. Jacques Rouche opened the Paris Opera to her productions of Antony and Cleopatra (1920)

and Phaedra (1923), revived Le Martyre de Saint­Sebastien (1922), and offered her principal roles in several ballets, including La Tragedie de Salome (1919) andIstar(1924). In 1923, at the Theatre Sarah-Bernhardt, she produced and starred in La Dame aux Camelias, a play closely associated with the "Divine Sarah," who had recently died after giving Rubinstein her blessing as an actress. Another success was Rubinstein's production of The Idiot (1925), a play by Fernand Noziere and Vladimir Bien­stock after the novel by Dostoyevsky.

None of Rubinstein's early roles had called for her to dance on pointe. However, in 1922, just before her fortieth birthday, she made her debut on the stage of the Paris Opera as a ballerina. The occasion was Artemis Troublee, a one-act ballet by Bakst with a mythological subject and an eighteenth-century setting, in which Rubinstein, as Artemis, wore a tutu, powdered wig, and pointe shoes. Review­ing the premiere, Jane Catulle-Mendes wrote of Rubinstein's "angular graces" and "long, long" line, Emile Vuillermoz of her "fragile" pointes.,8 Still the fascination with pointe remained. In 1923, at a charity matinee orga­nized by Princess Paley, she danced a version of The Dying Swan, while in a series of James Abbe photographs widely reproduced in these years, she posed in fluffy tarlatans and shiny blocked shoes - pictures that recall certain backstage portraits of Anna Pavlova.

At the same time Rubinstein was beginning to emerge as an important patron of French music. Between 1920 and 1927 she commis­sioned scores for incidental music and ballets from Schmitt (Antony and Cleopatra), PaulParay (Artemis Troublee), Roger Ducasse (Orphee), and Arthur Honegger (I:Impiratriee aux Roehers, the 1926 revival of Phedre). Moreover, begin­ningwith La Dame aux Camelias, she embarked on a long-term collaboration with Alexandre

BALLET REVIEW

Benois, who replaced Bakst (who died inr924) as her chief artistic adviser.

For Benois these were busy years. He de­signed the Opera's I924 production of Giselle (its first since the I860s) and in I926 headed the design team for Abel Gance's cinematic landmark, Napoleon. With his encyclopedic knowledge of art and considerable knowl­edge of music - "Benois knew more about music than any of [Diaghilev's] other paint­ers," Stravinsky wrote in a rare moment of generosity'9 - Benois was to prove instru­mental in Rubinstein's next major endeavor, the ballet company that debuted in November I928 at the Paris Opera as Les Ballets de Madame Ida Rubinstein.

Preparations were underway long before, as early as May, June, and July I927, according to Benois, who noted in his diary the many evenings spent with Rubinstein at her home listening to music. The entries are laconic, but it is clear that Benois was doing what Diaghi­lev had done with Scarlatti, Rossini, and Per­golesi a decade earlier: choosing the musical sources that a contemporary composer would orchestrate.

First, they listened to the Schubert-Liszt Soirees de Vienne, selections from which be­came the basis of La Bien-Aimee (The Beloved), a romantic ballet. Then they passed on to Bach and Les Now de Psyche et de li1mour (The Wed­ding of Psyche and Amour), a mythological subject set in the eighteenth century. They also listened to Debussy and to Ravel's Tom­beau de Couperin. Ravel (but not Debussy) would figure in the new enterprise with La Valse, which Rubinstein would produce for the first time as a ballet, and the newly com­missioned Bolero. The pianist was one Made­moiselle Atoche, whose inspired playing of Bach caused Benois to write, "C 'est une musi­cienne etonnante." 20

Toward the end of I927, as Stravinsky was finishing the music for Apollon Musagete, Ru­binstein invited him to write a ballet for her new company. 21 The details, as usual, were left to Benois.

He "submitted two plans," Stravinskywrote

SUMMER 2004

in his autobiography, "one of which seemed very likely to attract me. The idea was that I should compose something inspired by the music of Tchaikovsky. My well-known fond­ness for this composer, and, still more, the fact that November, the time fixed for the performance, would mark the thirty-fifth an­niversary of his death, induced me to accept the offer. It would give me an opportunity of paying my heartfelt homage to Tchaikovsky's wonderful talent." 22

Stravinsky was free to choose both the sub­ject and scenario of the ballet. He turned to Hans Christian Andersen and discovered the story known as "The Ice Maiden," which un­beknownst to Western critics had been the subject of two Soviet ballets in the I920S: Solveig, staged by Pavel Petrov at the former Maryinsky Theater in I922; The Ice Maiden, choreographed by Fyodor Lopukhov at the same house in April I927. The music for both was by Grieg, selected and orchestrated by Boris Asafiev, who published a study of Stra­vinsky in I929. Lopukhov, whose sister Lydia Lopokova had danced for Diaghilev, was the choreographer of the first Soviet productions of Firebird (I92I) and Pulcinella (I926) and an early protege of both Asafiev and Benois, who prior to emigration had served with Asafiev in the administration of the former Maryinsky Theater. 23

It is certainly possible that Stravinsky stumbled independently on "The Ice Maid­en," or as he initially called the ballet, La Vierge des Glaciers.24 However, it is also possible that the suggestion came from Benois. Certainly, of the fourteen musical sources that Benois mentions as possible "candidates" - "piano pieces, which, together, would constitute a subject, or, better still, a base on which a sub­ject could then be imposed, since the pieces would already be linked by purely musical affinities"25 - Stravinsky "ended up," as Rich­ard Taruskin has noted, "using more than half." 26

The composer never acknowledged this, daimingthat "my only precept in selecting the music was that none of the pieces should have

been orchestrated byTchaikovsky- i.e., my se­lection would have to come from piano music and songs."27 "Do you like the idea," Benois asked, "of fixing up Uncle Petya's music and making something new of it? If so . . . then simply say 'splendid,' and the matter will be done .. . . I would like to add a prayer: 'God grant that this proposition will prove inter­esting to you and that this dream that I have been nurturing might, thanks to you, really come to pass.",,8

Early in 1928 Bronislava Nijinska signed on as the ballet mistress and chief choreograph­er of Rubinstein's new company. "I assume responsibility for creating five ballets for your repertoire and for your company," she wrote to Rubinstein. "I must complete this work within six months, from I March to IJuneI928 and from IS August to IS November 1928, for a fee of IO,OOO French francs per month."29

The company that Nijinska now pulled to­gether was a microcosm of the "internation­al" enterprises that flourished in the I930S. Ni­jinska had an eye for talent, and along with the Ballets Russes veterans who had formed her own corps of dancers since 1925, she brought to the company youngsters who would prove themselves in the years to come-future chore­ographers like Frederick Ashton and David Li­chine (still dancing under his real name, David Lichtenstein), designers like William Chap­pell, leading men like Roman Jasinsky, "in­teresting" dancers like Nina Verchinina, who had studied modern dance in Germany. Ru­binstein's partner was Anatole Vilzak, a Mar­yinsky and Ballets Russes graduate who had worked with Nijinska at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires; his wife, Ludmilla Schollar, was the senior ballerina; Anna Ludmilla and Na­dejda Nicolaeva (Nicholas Legat's wife) were soloists.

The dancers came from all over: Poland, Ro­mania, Bulgaria, England, the United States; there were White Russians, Soviet Russians, and Russians who had been brought up in Par­is)O Rubinstein, reminisced Chappell many years later, "had beautiful manners, she knew every single nationality of every person in the

88

company [and] addressed them in their own language."31 Although Nijinska herself later turned down the chance to head the new post­Diaghilev Ballet Russe, many of its dancers came from the remarkable corps of young­sters Nijinska had assembled for Rubinstein.

Nijinska worked the company hard. Class­es, which were compulsory, and rehearsals took place at the Salle Jouffroy, only a few blocks from Bakst's former studio on the Boulevard Malesherbes. Ashton, in a letter to Marie Rambert, described the grueling sched­ule: "We have two groups for classes and they take place alternate weeks at 9 am & 10 am after them we rehearse til lunch & back at 3 or 4 til dinner & then back at 9 or 10 till II.30 or 12 pm. Generally one doesn't rehearse more than twice a day sometimes 3 as she takes people in groups till the ballet is finished & then calls full rehearsal. ... But I have been going 3 times a day as I have been under­studying." 32

By mid-August, as Rubinstein sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar on a cruise to Athens with her lover Walter Guinness (of the Guinness brewery fortune), Nijinska had finished The Snow Maiden (to music of Rim sky­Korsakov) and had started work on La Bien­Aimee, the Schubert-Liszt ballet. Stravinsky, meanwhile, was "working like a dog from morning till night," as he reported to conduc­tor Ernest Ansermet.B

By then, the composer had decided to retain only the "skeleton of anecdote from Ander­sen's story," as he wrote Benois. "There will only be three principal characters - a fairy, a young man, [and] a young woman .... I will write a small preface for the score and for the program, saying that I liken this Fairy to Tchaikovsky's Muse-in that way the ballet be­comes an allegory ....

"For this reason I do not tie either the stage designer or the director to the precise details and exigencies of the place and time of the ac­tion."

He added that this was not an impediment to "the Alpine decors, Interlaken, I850S cos­tumes" that the two had already discussed and

BALLET REVIEW

agreed upon.34 In fact, as Stravinsky well knew, the ballet was a stylistic hybrid. For one thingitwas full of characters: wise spirits, sil­ver spirits, peasants, fairies, friends, Tyrole­ans, musicians, old men, a German tourist with his rucksack and alpenstock. The hero was called Rudi, his fiancee Babette. For an­other, the ballet was full of action. A wedding procession crossed the stage; there was a yo­deling song; Rudi drank a big cup of wine; the Fairy appeared on arock,35 The piano score was replete with details that recall Petipa's in­structions to Tschaikovsky.

The composer was too busy to deal directly with Nijinska and conveyed his wishes through Benois. Moreover, despite the rapid­ly approaching premiere, he seemed curious­ly reluctant to release the music to Nijinska. Indeed, when he sent the completed score to his publisher, G. G. Pai'chadze, he asked him not to show it to Rubinstein, Nijinska, or Benois. "It is necessary for people such as they are - not particularly initiated - that I play the music for them myself. . .. Nijinskaya will howl, but do not pay any attention to that."36

A few days later he relented, realizing that fur­ther delay would only compromise the ballet. "She may give the music of the end to the pi­anist and demand from her the strict observa­tion of the metronomic markings."37

A week later he wrote, "Pass on immediate­ly to Ida and Nijinskaya that after the final scene of the third act with the young man, we will not let his bride come out, as we had ini­tially proposed. Thus her role ends at the Coda. I am informing Nijinskaya about this particularly ... for fear she would not pay at­tention to the text and take the absence of the bride's last appearance as an omission, or as forgetfulnes on my part."38

Stravinsky's arrogance toward his collabo­rators, above all Nijinska, who had choreo­graphed Les Noces and directed his opera Maura, speaks for itself. Not unexpectedly, when he finally saw the ballet a few days be­fore the first performance, the choroegraphy left him "cold."39

Le Baiser de la Fee opened at the Paris Opera

SUMMER 2004

on November 27, I928. The reviews were tepid. Critics found it tedious, and lamented what Henry Prunieres, writing in the New York Times, called Stravinsky's "backward turn."4° Several decried the influence ofTschaikovsky, "that poor Tchaikovsky," as Pierre Lalo put it in Comoedia, "poisoned by mediocre German influences, an insignificant composer of so many nothings for the voice and for the piano, the pompous, turgid, and empty composer of the unbearable Pathetique Symphony." As for Stravinsky's music, continued Lalo, itwas profoundly "disconcerting," lacking "bril­liance, vivid color, [and] force; only in the village fete of the second tableau do certain abrupt rhythmic surges recall, very distantly, the tremendous things of Sacre and Noces. The harmony forbids all daring and discord."41

Russians, who regarded Tschaikovsky as a national treasure, saw matters differently. They also understood that more than music was at stake in Baiser's "backward turn." An­dre Levinson, the Russo-French dance critic who had devoted his career since the early I9IOS to fighting the innovative choreograph­ic practices that stemmed from Isadora Dun­can and Michel Fokine, saw the ballet as a con­flict between mimetic action and the Roman­tic spirit as expressed in classical style.

Choreographically, he wrote in Comoedia, "the return to Tchaikovsky is only a stage of [the] flight to the living past. Taglioni's La Sylphide is the true prototype of a genre whose restoration is proclaimed by Le Baiser de laFee.

"Stravinsky's work thus offers a concen­trated extract of whatwas atits apogee the bal­let d'action. At times it develops; most often it summarizes laconically. In the language both artless and clever, poetic and rigorous of the academic dance of Romantic expression, the choreography of Mlle. Nijinska gives us, to tell the truth, ... not the quintessence, but rather a solution ever so slightly dull.

"For a century the Romantic ballet, the dance elegy, has changed without tiring of its unique and admirable subject: the soul hesi­tating between reality and dream, celestial

89

love versus profane love. At the denouement, the hero abandons his earthly fiancee to em­brace a ... shade, peri, or fairy. Thus Mons. Stravinsky's scenario, a traditional topos, ap­pears like a precis of the libretto of La Maladet­ta, the ballet by Mons. Vidal that is familiar to Opera regulars." 4'

Levinson applauded the return to the past. Diaghilev, unsurprisingly, deplored it. The classicism of Nijinska's works, he told an interviewer for the Russian newspaper Voz­rozhdenie (Renaissance), "manifests itself in undisguised pastiches." He continued, "When classics are a 'restoration of the past,' not only must one not safeguard them, but on the contrary one must further their destruc­tion."43

Always jealous of his "discoveries," Di­aghilev never forgave Stravinsky for accept­ing Rubinstein's commission. He wrote a scathing letter to Serge Lifar, his leading man and sometime lover, criticizing every aspect of the Rubinstein enterprise. "It's difficult to say what [Igor's ballet] was supposed to represent - tiresome, lachrymose, ill-chosen Tchaikovsky, supposedly orchestrated by Igor in masterly fashion. I say 'supposed­ly,' because it sounded drab, and the whole arrangement lacked vitality. The pas-de-deux, however, was quite well done to a beautiful theme from Tchaikovsky .... That, and the coda in the style of the Apollon were really the only bright spots ....

But what went on on the stage, it is impos­sible to describe. Suffice it to say that the first scene represents the Swiss mountains, the second a Swiss village on a holiday, accompa­nied by Swiss national dances, the third a Swiss mill, and the fourth back again to mountains and glaciers.

"The heroine was Shollar, who danced a longpas-de-deuxwith Vilzak, to Petipa's chore­ography, or at least a pastiche of his work. Bro­nia [Nijinska] showed not the least gleam of invention, not one single movement that was decently thought out.

"As for Benois' decor, it was like the sets at the Monte Carlo Opera House: these Swiss

90

landscapes were worse than anything by Bo­charov or Lambin . ... The whole thing was stillborn."44

There was more to this than petty spites. Unlike Benois, Diaghilev did not venerate the past. He was a modernist, who had accepted the revolution of cubism, and if he looked back, it was through the prism of modernity. Rubinstein, like Benois, never crossed the di­vide of cubism. Her art was rooted in the fin de siecle, and there it largely remained; only her taste in music showed an engagement with the twentieth century. In many ways, then, Rubinstein's collaboration with Benois was ideal: both were Petersburgers (Rubin­stein by upbringing, if not by birth), im­mensely cultured, with a catholic knowledge of the artistic and literary past; both, more­over, subscribed to an idea of beauty that was based on harmony and good taste. While this idea did not preclude elements of mod­ernism, it demanded that they be subordinat­ed to ends that were traditional, at least in terms of the avant-garde.

Although the very presence of Rubinstein at the Opera in the early 1920S had, in Leandre Vaillat's phrase, "assured the triumph of la ry­thmique," the company she formed in the late 1920S was rooted in the traditions of the danse d'ecole. With the exception of La Valse (trounced by critics for its "geometric" choreography), none of Nijinska's works were in anyway ex­perimental. Rather, they continued the syn­thesizing process begun in Les Noces and Les Biches (and subsequently abandoned by Di­aghilev), accommodating modernist innova­tions in style and syntax to the demands of tra­ditional ballet language and mainstream bal­let dramaturgy. Despite the privileged posi­tion assigned to Apollon Musagete, the neoclas­sical synthesis identified with post-Diaghilev ballet was closer in form and spirit to Rubin­stein's productions than to those of the Bal­lets Russes of the same period.

Indeed, after Les Noces and Les Biches, only two ofDiaghilev's productions-ApollonMusa­gete and Le Fils Prodigue - permanently survived the collapse of the Ballets Russes. By contrast,

BALLET REVIEW

no fewer than four of Rubinstein's works entered the international repertory: La Bien­Aimee, which Nijinska revived (as The Beloved) for the Markova-Dolin company in the mid-1930S and for Ballet Theatre in the 1940s; Le Baiser de la Fee, which Nijinska staged for the Teatro Colon in 1933 and reprised in 1936, and which both Ashton and Balanchine rechoreo­graphed, the former for Sadler's Wells in 1935 and the latter for the American Ballet in 1937; La Valse, which Balanchine produced for the New York City Ballet in 1951, and Ashton for La Scala in 1958 and for the Royal Ballet a year later; Bolero, which Lifar staged for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1941, Pilar Lopez and her sis­ter Argentinita for Ballet Theatre in 1943, and Maurice Bejart (in a version that used the table featured in Nijinska's original) for the Ballet of the Twentieth Century in 1960. Except for La Bien-Aimee, all remain living scores in the li­brary of twentieth-century ballet music.

The company's high standard of profes­sionalism, a tribute to Nijinska's daily efforts in the rehearsal studio, was noted by virtually every critic. Rubinstein was commended for her taste, the exceptional quality of her pa­tronge, and herwillingness to throw away mil­lions to create a work of surpassing beauty. To some her very traditionalism was a source of pleasure.

As Louis Laloywrote after the opening night program, "This first success ... gives me great joy, not only because it rewards a zeal for beau­ty of which itis not the first proof, but also be­cause I find here the justification of ideas that despite all the caprices of fashion I have always defended. Madame Rubinstein has wished for splendor and has obtained it with a sense of style that can delight the most refined taste."45

Pandering to fashion was a criticism often leveledatDiaghilev in these years; anotherwas the falling-off of discipline in his corps; still another, the gradual stripping away of grace notes and ornament in his ongoing quest for experiment. Moreover, ata time when his Paris audiences were dwindling and his seasons at the Opera had become rare and of very short

SUMMER 2004

duration, Rubinstein's grand public and two­week season at the house must have galled him. And he must have been infuriated by the view, expressed by critics like Henry Malherbe of Le Temps, that Rubinstein belonged on the Opera stage, the site of his earliest Paris tri­umphs.46

When the Ballets Russes turned up inMonte Carlo, where the Rubinstein company gave some performances in January 1929, Nijinska fled to Menton to avoid him. "They say that he 'hates' us very much," she wrote to a friend, "and has vowed to destroy US."47 How this musthave pained the choreographer, who had once looked up to Diaghilev as a kind of sur­rogate father.

In his "reports" to Lifar, Diaghilev reserved his nastiest remarks for Rubinstein: "Worst of all was Ida .... When she appeared with Vil­tzak, nobody, including me, recognized her. All stooped, her red hair a mess, and ballet slip­pers ... to make her appear smaller .... She is incapable of dancing anything .... Of her face only her immense and gaping mouth remains, with clenched teeth that make a grimace of a smile ... She has aged like the devil.

"In [La Bien-Aimee] she wore a very short tutu, well above her knees, white, with silver sequins. Viltzak, in gray trousers, was sup­posed to be a poet ... Ida, his muse. It was shameful. Large fragments of something classical, an adagio, a variation, after which she exited backstage, proud and stooped."48

Diaghilev, of couse, was not alone in criti­cizing Rubinstein for presenting herself as a classical dancer. Many blamed her advisers (or "flatterers," as they were sometimes called), although who they were and the in­terests they were sometimes said to be de­fending remain a mystery. Because so little is known of her personal life, and next to nothing of her early years, it is impossible to guess the origins of her obsessions - for this, surely, is the only way to explain her willing­ness to throw caution to the winds and make herself a public laughingstock.

Was it menopause? The ticking of the bio­logical clock? Or perhaps an extreme case of

9I

female masochism? In a rare moment of in­trospection, she confessed to the young actor and future cinema star Pierre Richard-Willm that "the theatre . .. is a perpetual torment, where our fragile balance and our truest ef­forts are ever the prey of caprices, passions, and misunderstandings of every kind. I am al­ways afraid."49

However much Rubinstein was criticized in the French press as a performer, her impor­tance as an arts patron was never in question. Her patronage extended to writers as well as composers, and embraced many of the most distinguished names in French letters and

music of the interwar period. Indeed, her commissions of the 1930s, climaxing in Perse­phone (in which she teamed Stravinsky and Gide fora second time) andJeanned~rc auBuch­er (text by Claudel, music by Honegger), es­tablished her as a patron of the highest order, rivaling Diaghilev himself. True, her success in these works depended on the annihilation of the dancer, the absorption of her physical body into the world of sound, the transfor­mation of flesh into word. By 1936, when Rubinstein was received into the Catholic Church, the prodigal of yore had returned to the bosom of the elect.

NOTES

1. "Ida Rubinstein Takes Wounded From Field," New York Sun, October 4,1914, p. 13.

2. See, for example, the unidentified photograph LC-USZ62 -40126, in the collection of the Library of Congress, and various unidentified clippings in the Ida Rubinstein Clippings File, Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (hereafter TD-NYPL).

3. "Star Dust," The New York Times, July II , 1915, sec. 10, p . 2; "New Ballet Stars May Be Seen Here," New York Sun , July 12, 1916, p. 7. In 1917 there was a flutter of correspondence between the Paris im­presario H. C. Buysens and the Shubert Brothers about a possible New York engagement; Rubin­stein's exorbitant demands put an end to the ne­gotiations in a matter of weeks. See H. C. Buysens, letters to Sam S. and Lee Shubert, March 13 and April 2, 1917, Shubert Archives (New York) .

4. Announcement, "Les Offrandes blesses 1 Con­ference par M. Robert de Montesquiou," Robert de Montesquiou Papers, 15090/67, Manuscript Division, Bibliotheque National (Paris) (hereafter BN-Manuscripts) ; unidentified clipping, L'Echo de Paris , December 22, 1916, Montesquiou Papers , 15090/190, BN-Manuscripts.

5. Gala program, "Matinee Extraordinaire au profit de la Croix Rouge Roumaine," Theatre National de I'Opera, June 27, 1917, PRO.A.6391 Programmes (Ida Rubinstein) , Bibliotheque de I'Opera (hereafter BN-Opera) .

6. Andre Gide,journal (1913-1922) (Rio de Janeiro: Editions d'Amerique, [1943]) , vol. 2, p. 298. On April 30 hewrote to Jacques Coupeau: " .. . je traduis Antoine et Cteopiitre; ce qui me passionne. Vous me

92

I'aviez bien dit: les autres traductions sontpiteuses; sans chaleur, sans nerf, sans vertu. Je suis tres fat au sujet de mon travail et pretends qu'il vous satis­fasse. Mais je vais bien vous offusquer en vous re­velantque cette traduction m'estdemandee par Ida Rubinstein qui pretend la monter des apres la guerre-c'est-a-dire: tres prochainement, pretend­elle. Amuse, peut-etre un peu trop, par Ie surpre­nant de l'aventure, j'ai accepte avec ravissement, et peut-etre etourderie" (Andre Gide, letter to Jacques Copeau, April 30, 1917, Correspondance Andre Gide Jacques Copeau, ed. Jean Claude (Paris: Gallimardl NRF, 1988), Vol. 2, p. In

7. See entry for November 30, 1917,journal (1913-1922), p. 316.

8. Lev [Leon] Bakst, letter to Igor Stravinsky, June 12, 1917, in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. Robert Craft (New York: Knopf, 1984), p. 89.

9. Stravinsky, telegram to Bakst, June 18, 1917, ibid. , p. 90; Bakst, letter to Stravinsky, June 21, 1917, ibid. , p. 90; Stravinsky, telegram to Bakst, July 5, 1917, ibid., p. 91 ; Bakst, telegram to Stravinsky, July 7, 1919, ibid., p. 91.

ro. Stravinsky, letter to Bakst, July II, 1917, ibid. ,

P·91. II. Bakst, letter to Stravinsky, August 3, 1917,

ibid., p. 92. 12. Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky

in Pictures and Documents (London: Hutchinson, 1979), p. 162.

13. Bakst, letter to Stravinsky, October 25 , 1917, in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, pp. 95 , 96. In Memories and Commentaries (Berkeley: University of California Press , 1959), one of Stravinsky's "con-

BALLET REVIEW

versation" books with Robert Craft, the composer claims that this discussion about the style of the production took place with Gide, rather than Bakst. He also claims that Gide approached him with the project "some months after Le Sacre" (p. 145).

14. Stravinsky, letter to Bakst, October 31 1917, ibid., p. 94; Charles Pequin, letterto Stravinsky, No­vember 26,1917, dossier Ida Rubinstein, Stravinsky Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel) (here­after SC-Sacher) ; Stravinsky, telegram to Bakst, De­cember 3, 1917, Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence , p. 97; Stravinsky, draft telegram to Pequin, December 6, 1917, dossier Ida Rubinstein, SC-Sacher; Pequin, letter to Stravinsky, December 7, 1917, ibid.; Stra­vinsky, draft telegram to Pequin, December 16, 1917, ibid.; Pequin, letter to Stravinsky, December 19,1917, ibid. See Stravinsky in Pictures andDocuments, p. 162, for additional correspondence.

IS. Marcel Proust to Madame Straus, n .d. [May 4-5,1920], in Letters of Marcel Proust, ed. and trans. Mina Curtiss, introd. Harry Levin (New York: Ran­dom House, 1945), p . 346. Alexander Schouvaloff, in Lion Bakst: The Theatre Art (London: Sotheby's Publications, 1991), quotes the impressions of an old Russian friend who visited Bakst around this time: "Bakst gave the impression of being half crazy. 'You know, I am nearly blind; I cannot look at the light' ... Upon hearing the story of his wife's sufferings he became very agitated, walking up and down the room and repeating: 'No, no ... don't tell me . . . itis so awful'" (p. 199).

16. The play was published in three installments - July I, August I, and September 1,1924.

17. Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1998), p. 146. Thiswasoriginallypublished

in 1936. 18. Jane Catulle-Mendes, "Les Premieres," n.d. ,

and Emile Vuillermoz, "Artemis troublee," Excelsior, n.d. , in Artimis Troublie (dossier d 'oeuvre) , BN­Opera.

19. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversa­tions with Igor Stravinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 97-98. This was first published in 1958.

20. June 20,1927. Thus far I have been unable to identifY Mademoiselle Atoche. The first entry re­ferring to the season is May 17, 1927, the last July 6, 1927, after which the diaries break off until 1931. I am grateful to Benois ' grandson Dimitri Vicheney for providing me with these and other excerpts from his grandfather's diaries.

21. Rubinstein to Stravinsky, December 5,

SUMMER 2004

[1927], dossier Ida Rubinstein, SC-Sacher. 22. Stravinsky, Autobiography, p. 146. 23 . For Lopukhov, see Elizabeth Souritz, Soviet

Choreographers in the 1920S , trans. Lynn Visson, ed. Sally Banes (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1990), chap. 6. Petrov's Solveig is discussed on pp. 66-73 . Asafiev (under the pseudonym Igor Glebov) published his Kniga 0 Stravinskom (A Book About Stravinsky) in Leningrad in 1929.

24. See his letter to Benois oOuly 12, 1928 (Reel 108, SC-Sacher), in which he informs the latter that he has changed the name of the ballet to Le Baiser de la Fie.

25. Quoted in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence , ed. Robert Craft (New York: Knopf, 1982), Vol I ,

p. 172 , n. 134. 26. Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Rus­

sian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through "Mavra" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), Vol. 2, p . 16ll. SeeExpositionsandDeuelopments (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) for Stravinsky's own list of attributions (pp. 84-85) . Appendix C (p. 158) contained a "Check List of Tchaikovsky Sources for Le Baiser de la Fie." This was first published in 1959.

27. Ibid. , pp. 83-84. 28. Quoted in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence,

Vol. I , p. 172, n. 134. 29. Nijinska to Rubinstein , n.d., trans. Nina

Dimitrievitch, Nijinska Papers, Music Division, li­brary of Congress (hereafter MD-LC). On March 24,1928, Rubinstein signed a contractwithLeonide Massine to choreograph three additional ballets; however, only David was performed during the November-December season. For the company's second Paris season the following spring, Massine choreographed Les Enchantements de la Fie Alcine. The late Vicente Garda-Marquez shared with me a copy of the Rubinstein letter contract.

30. For the identity of the dancers, see Nina Tikanova, La jeune Fille en bleu: Pitersbourg, Berlin,Paris (Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme, 1991) , p. 88.

31. Omnibus: Sir Fred - A Celebration , BBC-TV, 1988. I am grateful to Julie Cavanagh for providing me with a transcript of Chappell's remarks about Rubinstein.

32. Ashton to Rambert, n .d. [August 1928] , Bal­let Rambert Archives (London) . I am grateful to archivist Jane Pritchard for providing me with a copy of this letter. In a draft of an undated letter to Rubinstein, probably written in early September (Nijinska Archives , MD-LC), Nijinska gives a sim-

93

ilar rundown of the company's average day: "Our work is progressing as follows. In the mornings from 9 until II:30 there are two classes . Rehearsals are from II:30 until 12:30, then from 3 until 5, and in the evenings from 9 until II: 30. Everyone is work­ing well and enjoying their work."

33. Stravinsky to Ansermet, August II, 1928, in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, Vol. I, p . 192.

34. Stravinsky to Benois, July 12,1928, Reel 108, SC-Sacher.

35. See Benois' letter to Nijinska, September 9, 1928, conveying "wishes expressed by Igor Fedoro­vich," Nijinska Papers, MD-LC , as well as remarks by Stravinsky on six pages of penciled sketches for the ballet, Reel 108, SC-Sacher. Benois' costume de­sign for the German tourist is in the Fran~ois Tcher­kessof Collection, Paris.

36. Quoted in Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents,

P· 285· 37. Stravinsky to Palchadze, October 20, 1928,

dossier Ida Rubinstein, SC-Sacher. 38. Quoted in Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents,

P· 285· 39. Stravinsky, Autobiography, p. 148. 40. Henry Prunieres, "Paris Sees Ballet Novel­

ties," New York Times, December 23, 1928, sec. 8, p.8.

41. Pierre Lalo, "Les Ballets de Mme Ida Rubin­stein: 'Le Baiser de la Fee,'" Comoedia , December I,

1928, p. 1. 42. Andre Levinson, "La Choregraphie," ibid.,

p.2. 43. Quoted in 1. D. Liubimov, "0 klassike,"

Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance), December 18, 1928, in SergeiDiagilev i russkoeiskusstvo, ed. 1. S. Zil'bershtein and V. A. Samkov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1982), Vol. I, p. 252.

44. Quoted in Serge Lifar, Serge Diaghilev: His Life, His Work, His Legend (New York: Putnam, 1940; rpt. New York: Da Capo, 1976), pp. 338-339.

45. Louis Laloy, "Un Beau Spectacle d 'Opera: Les Ballets de Mme Ida Rubinstein," EEre nouvelle , No­vember 25, 1928, p . 1.

46. Henry Malherbe, "Chronique musicale," Le Temps, November 28,1928, p. 3.

47. Nijinska, draft letter to an unnamed corre­spondent, n .d. [mid-January 1929], Nijinska Pa­pers, MD-LC.

48. Quoted in Serge Lifar, Histoire du ballet russe (Paris: Nagel , 1950), pp. 239-240.

49. Pierre Richard-Willm, Loin des itoiles: Sou­venirs et dessins (Paris: P. Belfond, 1975), p. 165.

94

Music on Disc George Dorris

Sergei Prokofiev: Chout. WDR Sinfonieor­chester Koln condo Michail Turowski. CPO 999975-2 (56:58).

Sergei Prokofiev: Le Pas d:4.cier; The Prodi­gal Son. WDRSinfonieorchester Koln condo Michail Turowski. CPO 999 974-2 (73:08).

Sergei Prokofiev: On the Dnieper; Songs of Our Days. Russian State Symphonic Cap­pella and Russian State Symphony Orches­tra condo Valeri Polyansky. Chandos CHAN 10044 (66:35)·

Sergei Prokofiev: The Tale of the Stone Flower. BBC Philharmonic condo Gianan­drea Noseda. Chandos CHAN 10058 (2 CDs, 148:2 5).

Ballet scores and suites are perhaps Pro­kofiev's most frequently performed works in both the theater and concerts. Not counting the uncompleted Ala and Lolli (which in 1915 became the Scythian Suite) his eight ballet scores were turned out every four or five years, from Chout (1915, revised 1920) to The Tale of the Stone Flower, staged a year after his death in 1953. So they serve as milestones marking his stylistic development over four prolific decades . I've recently talked about Romeo and Cinderella, the two most popular ones, and now recordings of all the others except for Trapeze allow us to examine them more closely.

When Diaghilev rejected Ala and Lolli as too reminiscent of Le Sacre, Prokofiev turned in­stead to Chout, based on a brutal Russian folk­tale about a trickster buffoon. The twenty­five-year-old composer, thumbing his nose at convention, here revels in quirky shifting rhythms, dissonant harmonies, and orches­tral jokes as the buffoon gets himself into and then out of outlandish situations. The very choice of subject suggests how deeply in­volved Prokofiev was in the Russian theatrical avant-garde of his time, beginning with the nonrealistic subject and the grotesque aspects of its realization in music and action, as staged by Taddeus Slavinsky and Mikhail Lar­ionov. The invention never flags as any given

© 2004 George Dorris