Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev

StephenD. Press

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351553056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Ballet impresario Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev and composer Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev are eminent figures in twentieth-century cultural history, yet this is the first detailed account of their fifteen-year collaboration. The beginning was not trouble-free, but despite two false starts (Ala i Lolli and the first version of its successor, Chout) Diaghilev maintained his confidence in the composer. With his guidance and encouragement Prokofiev established his mature balletic style. After some years of estrangement during which Prokofiev wrote for choreographer Boris Romanov and conductor/publisher Serge Koussevitsky, Diaghilev came to the composer's rescue at a low point in his Western career. The impresario encouraged Prokofiev's turn towards 'a new simplicity' and offered him a great opportunity for career renewal with a topical ballet on Soviet life (Le Pas d'acier). Even as late as 1928-29 Diaghilev compelled Prokofiev to achieve new heights of expressivity in his characterizations (L'Enfant prodigue). Although Western scholars have investigated Prokofiev's operas, piano works, and symphonies, little attention has been paid to his early ballets written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Despite Prokofiev's devotion to opera, it was his ballets for Diaghilev as much as his concertos and solo piano works that earned his renown in Western Europe in the 1920s. Stephen D. Press discusses the genesis of each ballet, including the important contributions of the scenic designers (Mikhail Larionov, Georgy Yakulov and Georges Rouault) and the choreographer/dancers (L id Massine, Serge Lifar and George Balanchine), and the special relationship between the ballets' progenitors.

Chapter 1
Prokofiev and Diaghilev: the collaboration

Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891–1953) was introduced to Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872–1929) in July 1914 during the Ballets Russes’ London season. Despite Diaghilev’s later reference to him as “my second son” (his “first” being Igor Stravinsky) their relationship until the impresario’s death in 1929 was variable, inconstant and frequently complicated by the presence of Stravinsky (1882–1971). The same Diaghilev who would write highly critical letters and call Prokofiev an “utter imbecile” behind his back would prove his loyalty and trust with ballet commissions even in the wake of unsuccessful compositions. For his part Prokofiev was not so blatantly duplicitous, although he did complain to his friends about the delays in bringing his works to the stage, negotiated with “competitors,” and tried to arrange illicit performances of his Ballets Russes commissions. There were periods when the relationship was strained (after Diaghilev sided with Stravinsky in criticizing L’Amour des trois oranges, and when the impresario promoted Poulenc and Milhaud) and when it was tempered by geographic remove (for example, during and immediately after World War I). At the outset Prokofiev could play at best a distant second to Stravinsky in Diaghilev’s esteem. But by 1929 the prospect of L’Enfant prodigue and Stravinsky’s and Diaghilev’s recurring estrangements had turned the tables. Then in the final weeks a dark cloud appeared. These inconsistencies in their relationship notwithstanding, Diaghilev produced three of Prokofiev’s ballets—Chout (1921), Le Pas d’acier (1927) and L’Enfant prodigue (1929). These ballets not only garnered a fair measure of success for Diaghilev’s company and provided gratifying critical recognition for the young composer, but they laid the groundwork for the genre in which Prokofiev would achieve great renown.

Prokofiev first saw the Ballets Russes in mid-June 1913 at Paris’s new, elegant Théâtre des Champs-Élysées while on a summer trip to France, England and Switzerland with his widowed mother. They arrived at Paris’s Gare du Nord in the late afternoon of Sunday 15 June.¹ After settling into their hotel on the rue du Helder, Prokofiev ventured out onto the Boulevard des Italiens in search of friends from home: Nikolay Cherepnin, his favorite professor at the Conservatory, Mikhail Shteyman (Steiman), a former classmate in Cherepnin’s conducting class and now an assistant conductor for the company, and the Andreyevs, professional singers he knew from St Petersburg. Anna Andreyevna, a mezzo, was a Professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory and Nikolay Andreyev, a tenor, sang at the Mariinsky Theatre. This season he was assuming the roles of the Scribe and Prince Shuisky in Diaghilev’s productions of Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov, respectively. Prokofiev liked the “noisy boulevard” and quickly realized that the “celebrated liveliness and joy” of the French people was really true. Not having any luck in his quest, he stopped by the Élysées Palace Hôtel where Diaghilev was staying to ask for his assistance. Prokofiev had never been introduced to the impresario, nevertheless he sent him his card with a note asking if he knew his friends’ whereabouts. Diaghilev was not in but his valet appeared with the name of the Andreyevs’ hotel and the news that Cherepnin had just departed Paris for Russia.² This last information was disappointing: Prokofiev had hoped that Cherepnin would help him interest local musicians in several of his manuscript scores which he had brought along.³ After visiting three different hotels named Terminus without finding the Andreyevs he abandoned his search and dined at the Café de la Paix. He finally located the couple the following noon. They warmly welcomed Prokofiev and convinced him that he and his mother should take adjoining rooms at their new quarters, a pension on the rue du Marbeau, “with excellent air,” just a stone’s throw from the Bois de Boulogne.

Not surprisingly, this bustling metropolis of nearly three million made a tremendous impression on the 22-year-old. He was charmed by the Parisian tempo of life and general level of culture. He found certain aspects to be vexing, however; for example, his encounter with a street vendor who tried to sell him dirty postcards along with the street map he wanted,⁴ and the necessity of wearing a top hat to formal occasions, such as Ballets Russes intermissions. Along with visits that week to the Louvre (on a guided tour that was “very interesting, then boring, then torture”) and the Eiffel Tower (which he found fascinating), Prokofiev saw Khovanshchina starring Chaliapin on 16 June and attended the ballet on 17 June and 19 June, viewing Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, Fokine’s ballet Schéhérazade set to Rimsky-Korsakov’s score, the “Polovtsian Dances” from Borodin’s Prince Igor and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloë among other works. He had missed by two days the final performance in the premier run of Le Sacre du printemps, but the opening night riot, Stravinsky’s audacious music and Nijinsky’s shocking choreography were still the talk of the town.

Prokofiev was too early by two weeks to see Le Sacre in London, where he was “dragged” for five days beginning 22 June by the Andreyevs, lodging in their pension on Clifton Gardens. He enjoyed strolling along Oxford and Regent Streets, but complained about “fast buses” and traffic on the wrong side of the street; he summed up, “Paris is prettier.” At Hyde Park Prokofiev happened onto a procession with King George and French President Poincaré in “splendid old carriages.” He greatly enjoyed visiting Westminster Abbey, where he stood before the monuments to Handel and Shakespeare “for a long time.” He finally met Shteyman at a rehearsal of Boris Godunov and chatted briefly with the opera’s conductor Emil Cooper. Prokofiev wrote home to Cherepnin that he attended the “glittering” opening night performance of Boris Godunov featuring Chaliapin at Drury Lane Theatre. The performance was sold out so he had to sit in the wings with Shteyman but he was still able to mingle with the elegantly attired guests during intermission. This was Chaliapin’s London debut and from his vantage point Prokofiev could see how nervous he was, “pacing like a beast in a cage.” He considered the basso “an artist before whom I bow.” The performance made a tremendous impression on the young composer; he reported in his Diary, “Boris is a wonderful opera. Musorgsky really understands the stage and that is how one should write. I really want to write an opera. I will have a good, genuine [nastoyashchaya] opera!” His whirlwind visit to London concluded with a trip to Windsor in the company of Shteyman, but only half was accessible due to the state visit. In his letter to Cherepnin, he admitted that he “suffered not knowing the language.” But in his Diary he wrote “I decided to study English. It is absolutely necessary for future trips.”

Although he would not enter into Diaghilev’s circle for another year, Prokofiev was well aware of the fame the Ballets Russes had brought to Stravinsky, an acquaintance from St Petersburg since the spring of 1910. Despite his keen interest in Stravinsky’s music, Prokofiev was hardly swept away by it as his unreserved criticism shows (see Chapter 2). Even though the notorious Pavlosk premier of his Second Piano Concerto was still weeks away, Prokofiev was already quite proud of his own reputation as an enfant terrible of the avant-garde in St Petersburg, and at this stage he failed to appreciate his colleague’s neonational style which had been fashioned at Diaghilev’s behest. Likewise, Prokofiev would, by his own admission, fail to immediately grasp the significance of Le Sacre du printemps when he first heard it at a concert performance in St Petersburg led by Serge Koussevitzky in February of 1914. Nevertheless, his trip West in 1913 made a tremendous impression and broadened his horizons. Shortly after his graduation from the Conservatory the following spring, Prokofiev departed for London hoping for a commission from the crafty impresario who seemed to hold the keys to success in the music capitals of Western Europe.

Traveling alone but armed with letters of recommendation from Cherepnin, Prokofiev arrived in London on 22 June 1914 and headed once again to Clifton Gardens. He spent his first days meeting his friends the Andreyevs, acclimatizing himself and settling into a studio provided for him by Otto Kling in his music shop at 54 Great Marlborough Street, the London branch of the German music publishing company Breitkopf and Härtel. There from 10 in the morning until he broke for lunch at 1 p.m. he began rewriting his Sinfonietta, a work he had begun in 1909 and would not finish tinkering with until 1929. Prokofiev asked Andreyev to find out Walter Nouvel’s address as he was a member of Diaghilev’s circle and a useful conduit to the great impresario. Unaware of the reason for the request, Andreyev asked Diaghilev for the information the next day during a performance of Prince Igor. The impresario responded by requesting that Prokofiev be brought to meet him in the wings the next day, adding that he wanted to discuss a business matter. The next day Prokofiev duly arrived, but the meeting did not take place until the following day after a performance of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol: 29 June, one week after he arrived. Prokofiev recalled that the impresario with his monocle, frock-coat, white gloves and top hat was a sight worth seeing (Fig. 1). He recorded in his Diary that Diaghilev extended his hand in a white glove saying that he was very pleased to meet him and that “for a long time he wanted to ask me to attend his shows … and in the near future he had to have a serious talk with me and hear my music, about which we would make an appointment through Nouvel. We parted on that. I soon met Nouvel who told me that Diaghilev wanted to order a ballet from me.” Prokofiev had achieved his goal. The fateful assassination in Sarajevo on 28 June seems not to have fazed him in the least, nor, for that matter, Diaghilev, who still anticipated the company’s tour through Germany beginning in October.

Already in the middle of its season at Drury Lane Theatre, the Ballets Russes appeared as spectacular as ever, though it was actually in a state of flux. During the previous year the company had endured Nijinsky’s sudden departure, the strained but necessary return of Fokine, and financial uncertainty bordering on outright collapse. The current season, another joint venture with the conductor Thomas Beecham, was taking place due to the largesse of his father, Sir Joseph of “Beecham Pills” fame. But even more significant was Diaghilev’s gradual shift in artistic vision away from long standing Mir iskusstva (World of Art) ideals⁵ towards an interest in modernism and the futurist movement.⁶ The arrival of the young dancer Léonid Massine (1896–1979), who had recently debuted in the title role of La Légende de Joseph, and the painter Natalya Goncharova, who had painted the fresh, neoprimitive décor for the surprisingly successful ballet-chanté staging of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Le Coq d’or, fueled the transformation.

Prokofiev journeyed north to Birmingham for a few days as the guest of the composer, conductor and university professor Granville Bantock, whom he had met through Kling. Upon his return to London he received a letter from Nouvel saying that Diaghilev had invited him to a luncheon on Friday, 3 July. Prokofiev arrived at the restaurant with Nouvel (who, quite perceptively, teased him about his extraordinary careerism) and after some time Diaghilev arrived accompanied by Massine. Stravinsky missed this and all subsequent meetings since he had left for Russia to gather materials for what would become the ballet Les Noces soon after the rather tepid London premier of his “conte lyrique” Le Rossignol. The discussion opened on the subject of the ballet, Diaghilev expounding on the latest trends, namely that the choreographer and the scenarist now follow a completed musical score. Prokofiev was uninterested and tried to steer the conversation towards opera, specifically his plans to set Dostoevsky’s “The Gambler.” It was Diaghilev’s turn to be uninterested and the conversation returned to ballet. Diaghilev firmly believed that opera was passé and ballet was flourishing, but probably did not add that he staged operas only when it was financially prudent to do so. After lunch the group headed to Kling’s shop where Prokofiev played his Second Sonata, his opera Maddalena (1911, revised 1913) and his Second Piano Concerto. According to the composer, Maddalena was liked least of all whereas the last two movements of the Sonata and and the entire Second Concerto “sent Diaghilev into ecstasy.” The impresario exclaimed, “Now we should eat from the beginning,” as if to say (in Prokofiev’s interpretation) “that now he understood how and about what he should talk with me.” Prokofiev was given a pass to all Ballets Russes performances and after several days was invited to the salon at the Hôtel Cecil for further conversations.

At their next meeting Diaghilev toyed with the idea of staging the Second Concerto as a ballet pantomime with Prokofiev as soloist. The second theme of the finale (reh. 99ff), which resembles a Russian peasant chastushka and clearly has a kuchkist air about it,⁷ suggested to Diaghilev a Pan-like creature such as Lel in Ostrovsky’s Snegurochka (Snow Maiden), but one who was “gently grotesque and mocking.” Prokofiev was reluctant to use his Concerto as a ballet accompaniment, but surely he realized that performing it with the famous Ballets Russes would, as he wrote to his mother, “launch me on a dazzling career as a pianist.” The idea was eventually dropped due to the difficulty in adapting a story.

Prokofiev suggested writing a new ballet but Diaghilev wondered if there was enough time, although adding that he definitely wanted to present a ballet with the composer’s music in the next season. Diaghilev then had an idea for a plotless ballet set to a suite of the composer’s piano pieces which would be orchestrated. This, he believed, could serve as a stopgap in case the ballet d’action would have to be postponed until 1916. They decided to discuss this further with Nijinsky, who would be coming to London any day. Diaghilev and the famous dancer/choreographer, now married and recently a father, had made an uneasy rapprochement earlier that spring. Apparently the impresario’s negative feelings about his avant-gar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of music examples
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Prokofiev and Diaghilev: the collaboration
• 2 The path to success: gauging originality versus influence in Ala i Lolli and Chout
• 3 The two versions of Chout and the Suite
• 4 Topical appropriations and a “new simplicity” in Le Pas d’acier
• 5 L’Enfant prodigue and the end of a fruitful collaboration
• Select bibliography
• Index