Diaghilev's Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World
Sep 2022 · Faber & Faber
Ebook
320
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About this ebook
Serge Diaghilev was the Russian impresario who is often said to have invented the modern art form of ballet. Commissioning such legendary names as Nijinsky, Fokine, Stravinsky, and Picasso, this intriguingly complex genius produced a series of radically original art works that had a revolutionary impact throughout the western world.Off stage and in its wake came scandal and sensation, as the great artists and mercurial performers involved variously collaborated, clashed, competed while falling in and out of love with each other on a wild carousel of sexual intrigue and temperamental mayhem. The Ballets Russes not only left a matchless artistic legacy - they changed style and glamour, they changed taste, and they changed social behaviour.
The Ballets Russes came to an official end after many vicissitudes with Diaghilev's abrupt death in 1929. But the achievements of its heroic prime had established a paradigm that would continue to define the terms and set the standards for the next. Published to mark the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Diaghilev's birth, Rupert Christiansen - leading critic and self-confessed 'incurable balletomane' - presents this freshly researched and challenging reassessment of a unique phenomenon, exploring passionate conflicts and outsize personalities in a story embracing triumph and disaster.
The Ballets Russes came to an official end after many vicissitudes with Diaghilev's abrupt death in 1929. But the achievements of its heroic prime had established a paradigm that would continue to define the terms and set the standards for the next. Published to mark the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Diaghilev's birth, Rupert Christiansen - leading critic and self-confessed 'incurable balletomane' - presents this freshly researched and challenging reassessment of a unique phenomenon, exploring passionate conflicts and outsize personalities in a story embracing triumph and disaster.
About the author
Rupert Christiansen was dance critic for The Mail on Sunday from 1995 to 2020, and has written on dance-focused subjects for many publications in the UK and USA, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's and Queen, The Observer, Daily Telegraph, The Literary Review, Dance Now and Dance Theatre Journal. He was opera critic and arts correspondent for the Daily Telegraph 1996-2020, and is the author of a dozen non-fiction books, including the Pocket Guide to Opera and T he Complete Book of Aunts (both published by Faber). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and lives in London.
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