The thing about Pierre Monteux's May 29, 1913 premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, is that it's not just the anniversary of the first time a famous piece was played in public. It's the anniversary of the most famous scandal in music history (and ballet history).
The audience was so violently divided in their opinions of the performance that there was an actual riot; there are widely disparate accounts of the evening, and some say the police removed some audience members, so contentious did things become. The orchestra was bombarded with projectiles, and the audience's vocal disapproval (combined with Rite supporters' vocal disapproval of the anti-Rite faction's demonstrations) drowned out the music often enough that the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, had to spend much of the performance standing in the wings shouting directions to the dancers,...
The audience was so violently divided in their opinions of the performance that there was an actual riot; there are widely disparate accounts of the evening, and some say the police removed some audience members, so contentious did things become. The orchestra was bombarded with projectiles, and the audience's vocal disapproval (combined with Rite supporters' vocal disapproval of the anti-Rite faction's demonstrations) drowned out the music often enough that the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, had to spend much of the performance standing in the wings shouting directions to the dancers,...
- 5/30/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
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