Was there REALLY a riot at the Rite? That's what this video is all about.
It's in response to some of the comments we got on our Rite of Spring video.
And I m going to read out a few of these. Alucard said: There was no riot.
This video repeats the infamous legends that surrounded the first public concert of the piece.
Most are inaccurate . Many of the composers quoted in this video,
such as Saint-Saens, were never there. Most of the reviews at the time claimed
that the core issue was the dancing. Val says: The debut riot occurred not
because of Stravinsky's music but because of oddball choreography.
NJ Lauren says that the riot was staged . Diane Jenkins says: I think the
problem was actually the mixed audience. What we are going to do is address some of these
responses in this video. What WE present is the orthodox,
traditional viewpoint that on that night of the 29th May 1913 there was a riot at the
Theatre des Champs-Elysees when Diaghilev's ballet, The Rite of Spring, was premiered.
To quote Stravinsky himself: The curtain opened on a group
of knock-kneed and long-braided lolitas. They were jumping up and down and the storm broke.
Fifty years later, one of the dancers - a lady called Lydia Sokolova -
her name was not so exotic as that - it was Hilda Munnings in fact
she recalled the audience raring for a fight. They weren't even letting the music play.
The moment the conductor got to the podium he was shouted at and there was a huge uproar.
Everyone was readying themselves for a fight. So we've been left with reports of fistfights,
of catcalling, of fruit being pelted at the performers,
of someone even being challenged to a duel in the audience.
Apparently, dozens of people were arrested by the police.
Now, each one of these incidents is recounted in our video
but what I'd say is pretty remarkable is that for such a well-known
event of international, historical renown, barely any of those incidents can be verified.
In fact, the idea that there was a "riot" - to use that word at all -
arguably only crystallised a few decades after the event.
We don't really find the word used in contemporary newspaper reports.
So, was this all a PR stunt by Diaghilev? Was Saint-Saens really at the premiere
or was he in fact at a later performance - the concert version of the piece -
when he made that baboon comment, if he made it at all?
Was it Ravel, Debussy or both of them who were cheering on Stravinsky at the premiere,
or was it at the second ballet performance, if they did at all?
Well what we CAN say is that the audience were geared up for what they believed would be
really outrageously modern spectacle, because they year before they had heard
Debussy's Prelude a l apres-midi d'un Faun, also presented by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes,
and the exoticism and eroticism of it - this surreal archaic fantasy of a piece -
raised more than a few eyebrows amongst the Parisian aristocracy.
But the Rite was arguably different. It was loud.
It was vulgar. It was showing
a primitive society; people who danced to celebrate their relationship with the earth:
NOT what the Parisian aristocrats were expecting: pretty-pretty tutus and Swan Lake.
This leads us to suspect that part of the problem may have been Nijinsky's choreography,
as some of our commenters have talked about. Apparently, when the concert version of the
Rite was presented a year later that is, just the music
Stravinsky was carried on the shoulders of his loving admirers out of the concert hall:
an Emperor of the Avant-Garde.
Our commenters have pointed out that Nijinsky's choreography was really grating;
it pulled the dancers down to the ground - we looked at this in the video.
It was the opposite of graceful ballerinas floating through the air,
defying gravity - to use a phrase from Wicked! And what about Roerich's costumes?
He covered his ballerinas from head to toe. There was no skin showing.
Yes, it was primal, but not very sexy.
And we know that Parisian fashionistas like sexy. So we've got unconventional dancing
and unconventional costumes, but could THOSE factors have caused a RIOT?
Really? Well one of our commenters, Diane, said
that it was all about the mix of the audience: it was THAT which caused the riot.
She may be on to something there. This does chime with contemporary accounts
of class warfare amongst the audience. We looked at little bit at this in our video.
Stravinsky's great friend, the poet Jean Cocteau, talked about
the aesthetic crowd of avant-gardists in the stalls who would applaud anything that was novel
to show their contempt for the people up in the boxes.
So what we can conclude is this: that the workings of myth and legend
all play their part in informing our understanding of great works of art.
And that understanding evolves over time until
the great work of art forms a whole new life and meaning of its own.
And what better piece to fan the flames of OUR fans than the Rite of Spring,
which is essentially a ballet all about myth and legend itself.