Sergei Diaghilev

Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929), Russian ballet impresario who, with the Ballets Russes (1909-1929), revived ballet as a serious art form.

Born on March 31, 1872, in Gruzine, Novgorod Province, Diaghilev studied law in St Petersburg. He intended to pursue a career as a composer, but was dissuaded from doing so by the Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Diaghilev soon joined a circle of writers and painters led by the Russian painters Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, then founded and edited the progressive art journal Mir Iskusstva (The World of Art, 1899-1904). In 1899 he became artistic adviser to the Imperial Theatres in Moscow and produced several operas and ballets. From 1904 to 1908 he organized a number of foreign exhibitions of Russian art. In 1906 he settled in Paris where, in his 1908 production of the opera Boris Godunov by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, he staged the celebrated bass Feodor Chaliapin.

In 1909, in collaboration with the Russian dancer and choreographer Michel Fokine and a group of Russian dancers that included Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Mordkin, Tamara Karsavina, and Adolph Bolm, Diaghilev established the Ballets Russes. This company made possible the realization of Fokine's ideal of ballet as an art unifying dance, drama, music, and painting; its impact on 20th-century ballet is inestimable. Diaghilev presented an extraordinary range of ballet genres, from the romantic Giselle (1910), to the light and surreal Parade (1917), to the lavish Russian Imperial style of The Sleeping Beauty (1921).

Diaghilev was extraordinarily effective in stimulating the creative gifts of the people he worked with, and his drawing together of the major talents of his era was a catalyst for much of the art and music of the period. His scenic designers, besides Bakst and Benois, included the French artists Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Maurice Utrillo, as well as the poet-designer Jean Cocteau (who also wrote ballet scenarios for Diaghilev) and Pablo Picasso. Diaghilev commissioned many musical scores from the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky, including The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913), Les Noces (1923), and Apollon musagète (1928). He also commissioned Daphnis and Chloé (1912), by the French composer Maurice Ravel; The Three-Cornered Hat (1919), by the Spaniard Manuel de Falla; and works by the Frenchmen Darius Milhaud and Erik Satie. Major choreographers of the 20th century who passed through his company were Russian-born George Balanchine, Léonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, and Serge Lifar.