- The most famous ballet impresario of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His company, the Ballet Russes, premiered the original productions of Stravinsky's "The Firebird", "Petrouchka" and "Le Sacre du Printemps" (The Rite of Spring), as well as the ballet versions of Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade".
- The success of the 1906 exhibition inspired Diaghilev to present Russian music to the world's culture capital. In 1907, he organised 'Concerts historiques russes' with famous composers like Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Glazunov, Feodor Chaliapin, and Félia Litvinne. The tour was supported and sponsored by Diaghilev's royal patrons Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia and Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In the spring of 1908, Diaghilev mounted a production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, starring Feodor Chaliapin, at the Paris Opéra. Boris Anisfeld created the sets, designed by Bakst and Benois. To maximize authenticity, one of the artists Ivan Bilibin even travelled to Arkhangelsk Oblast to purchase the costumes. The tour became a sensation and the success was overwhelming, however, financially, it was unprofitable and ended with a loss of 85,000 francs.
- Diaghilev cultivated most of the most respected dancers of the early twentieth century, including Tamara Karsavina, Adolph Bolm, Mikhail Mordkin, Anna Pavlova, Lydia Lopokova, Vera Fokina, Ludmilla Schollar, Lubov Tchernicheva, Lydia Sokolova, Leon Woizikovsky, Anton Dolin, Alexandra Danilova, Tamara Geva, Alicia Markova, and Serge Lifar.
- The world of ballet changed dramatically when the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev took Paris by storm at the Théâtre du Châtelet in May of 1909. Armed with ground-breaking choreographic originality and an innovative use of collaborating artists, the Ballets Russes produced some of the most significant ballet masterpieces of the twentieth century. The man behind this accomplishment was Russian art critic, impresario, and producer Serge Diaghilev, who served as founder and artistic director of the Ballets Russes until his death in August of 1929 at the age of 57.
- Perhaps Diaghilev's most notable composer-collaborator, however, was Igor Stravinsky. Diaghilev heard Stravinsky's early orchestral works Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed enough to ask Stravinsky to arrange some pieces by Chopin for the Ballets Russes. In 1910, he commissioned his first score from Stravinsky, The Firebird. Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) followed shortly afterwards, and the two also worked together on Les noces (1923) and Pulcinella (1920) together with Picasso, who designed the costumes and the set.
- The House of Diaghilev in Perm was a local cultural centre, and the Diaghilevs housed a musical evening every second Thursday, Modest Mussorgsky being one of the most frequent guests. At that time Sergei Diaghilev composed his first romance( narrative ballad) at the age of 15.
- He was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.
- In 1908 Dyagilev brought a production of "Boris Godunov" to Paris with Chaliapin and was then invited to present a Paris season of Russian opera and ballet in 1909. With some of the best dancers from St. Petersburg and Moscow he scored a unique triumph in May and June 1909 in Paris.
- The Ekstrom Collection of the Diaghilev and Stravinsky Foundation is held by the Department of Theatre and Performance of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
- In the same year of 1899 in which he co-founded the progressive art magazine "Mir Iskoustva" ("The World of Art"), Dyagilev was appointed artistic advisor of the Maryinsky Theatre, where he was in charge of the publication of the theatre annual and of the highly successful productions of "Sadko" and "Sylvia." He resigned from his post in 1901, and after the magazine stopped appearing in 1904, he concentrated on organizing exhibitions of Russian art in St. Petersburg and Paris.
- Diaghilev was rather skeptical about ballet; he said that 'anyone with no special wit can enjoy it, there is no sense or subject in ballet'. Nevertheless, in 1909 the very first ballet Saison Russe took place and its success overwhelmed even the artists themselves. The first season included Le Pavillon d'Armide, Polovtsian Dances, Nuit d'Egypte, Les Sylphides, and operas Boris Godunov, The Maid of Pskov and the first part of the Ruslan and Lyudmila. The ballets followed the operas and were performed after the second intermission. Leading dancers Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Ida Rubinstein, Mikhail Mordkin immediately became world-known stars. Diaghilev's innovation was to synthesize dance, music and visual arts with set decorations and costumes into a single performance.
- Diaghilev was known as a hard, demanding, even frightening taskmaster. Ninette de Valois, no shrinking violet, said she was too afraid to ever look him in the face. George Balanchine said he carried around a cane during rehearsals, and banged it angrily when he was displeased. Other dancers said he would shoot them down with one look, or a cold comment. On the other hand, he was capable of great kindness, and when stranded with his bankrupt company in Spain during the 1914-18 war, gave his last bit of cash to Lydia Sokolova to buy medical care for her daughter.
- The artist most directly associated with Diaghilev's pioneering vision was Léon Bakst, who created costumes or set designs for fifteen ballets, dating from the establishment of the Ballets Russes in 1909 to 1914.
- Throughout his life, Diaghilev was severely afraid of dying in water, and avoided traveling by boat.
- His Ballets Russes became an independent private company when Vaslav Nijinsky resigned from the Maryinsky Theatre. His company, financed solely by the European aristocracy, was often on the verge of bankruptcy and never returned to Russia after the October Revolution (nor did it ever perform there).
- After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev stayed abroad. Once it became obvious that he could not be lured back, the new Soviet regime condemned him in perpetuity as an especially insidious example of "bourgeois decadence". Soviet art historians wrote him out of the picture for more than 60 years.
- Passionate to promote Russian art abroad, in 1906, Diaghilev organized and opened the 'Two Centuries of the Russian art and Sculpture' exposition at Salon d'Automne. It included 750 works from 103 authors, from modern artists to the ancient icons. The exhibition was designed by Léon Bakst and occupied 12 rooms in the Grand Palais. It, too, enjoyed enormous success and in many ways paved the way for the future success of the Ballet Russe. France was soon immersed in fashion à la russe. Diaghilev was offered the Legion of Honour award, but refused in honour of Bakst.
- Diaghilev's interest and expertise in art resulted in set and costume designs from a wide range of visual artists that included Alexandre Benois, Georges Braque, André Derain, Aleksandr Golovin, Natalia Goncharova, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Mikhail Larinov, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Nikolai Roerich, and Maurice Utrillo.
- Of critical importance to the success of the Ballets Russes was Diaghilev's nurturing of dancers and choreographers. With the dissolution of the Ballets Russes in 1929, most of these choreographers went on to create works for the various incarnations of new Ballets Russes-inspired dance companies.
- The film The Red Shoes is a thinly disguised dramatization of the Ballets Russes.
- The active years of Diaghilev's career can be divided into two periods: the one in St Petersburg (1898-1906) and the other in emigration (1906-1929).
- The Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Petersburg State University is named after Sergei Diaghilev.
- Although the era of domination of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes ended in 1929, its dancers and choreographers scattered around the globe, forming other dance companies that helped shape a new era of modern ballet.
- His mother died from childbed fever soon after his birth. In 1873, his father Pavel met and married Elena Panaeva, who loved Sergei and raised him as her own child.
- Diaghilev's life and the Ballets Russes were inextricably entwined. His most famous lover was Nijinsky. However, according to Serge Lifar, of all Diaghilev's lovers, only Léonide Massine, who replaced Nijinsky, provided him with "so many moments of happiness or anguish".
- The exotic appeal of the Ballets Russes had an effect on Fauvist painters and the nascent Art Deco style. Coco Chanel is said to have stated that "Diaghilev invented Russia for foreigners.".
- Among Diaghilev's revolutionary ideas was the aspiration to make ballet music equal in importance to dance. Consequently, he commissioned scores from composers such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud, Constant Lambert, Erik Satie, and Vittorio Rieti.
- He lived from paycheck to paycheck to finance his company, and though he spent considerable amounts of money on a splendid collection of rare books at the end of his life, many people noticed that his impeccably cut suits had frayed cuffs and trouser-ends.
- Diaghilev dismissed Nijinsky summarily from the Ballets Russes after the dancer's marriage to Romola de Pulszky in 1913. Nijinsky appeared again with the company, but the old relationship between the men was never re-established; moreover, Nijinsky's magic as a dancer was much diminished by incipient mental illness. Their last meeting was after Nijinsky's mind had given way, and he appeared not to recognise his former lover.
- When he entered the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, he also had private music lessons with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Instead of the usual four, it took him six years to graduate.
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