An alarm has been given, and at this juncture a policeman approaches with the ancient puppet-showman, an odder figure than ever, wrapped in a voluminous black coat with a tall hat upon his head. The crowd, bewildered by the strange events just witnessed, draws back and watches the showman with puzzled curiosity as he bends over the prostrate figure of Pétrouchka. Can it be they have been spectators of a tragedy?
The showman is in no wise disconcerted. Stooping, he takes hold of the bundle of gaily-coloured rags that lies so forlornly on the street, and lifts it up. It dangles limp and lifeless from his upraised hand before the astonished eyes of all. A corpse? Nothing of the sort—a doll! Incredulous hands are stretched out to touch, but there is no need of that. The showman begs the company to see for themselves. The head is wooden; the body (as a thin powdery stream falling to the pavement testifies) is stuffed with sawdust!
The crowd disperses. Satisfied that the tragedy was no tragedy, they yet feel a distaste for the scene of an occurrence so disturbing, and drift away to another part of the fair. The showman is left alone.
With a shrug the old magician moves towards his booth, trailing behind him the draggled figure of his puppet. As he nears the steps a shrill screech bursts upon his ears. He starts and looks fearfully about him, for he recognises the sound. Again the screech greets him, and looking up he espies, mopping and mowing above the cornice of the booth, the ghostly figure of Pétrouchka.
The trailing bundle of rags and sawdust drops from the sorcerer’s hands. Horror-struck, he turns and flees.
“Pétrouchka” is the joint work of MM. Igor Stravinsky and Alexandre Benois, of whom the former composed the music, while the latter designed the scenery and costumes. The restraint, the fine selective instinct, which Benois has shown in his manipulation of the wealth of material lying to his hand produces a most artistic result. The local colour is firmly, but without offending emphasis, insisted upon—that it is a Russian fair in which we find ourselves, there is no mistaking. Nor does he lack humour; nothing could be defter than the grotesque touches with which the rival puppets’ boxes are adorned, nothing more truly bizarre than the opera cloak and silk hat in which he garbs the fantastic showman for the dénouement.
In “Pétrouchka,” as in “L’Oiseau de Feu,” Stravinsky shows himself a master of the art of writing ballet music. Throughout the four scenes he displays not only a nice sense of dramatic fitness, but a shrewd appreciation of character. Whether his theme is the quasi-pathetic sufferings of Pétrouchka, the dollish coquetry of the Dancer, or the grotesque humours of the Blackamoor, he never fails to be expressive. In the treatment of such a subject as “Pétrouchka” (described by the authors as a series of “burlesque scenes”) his humorous perception is of large assistance. In the trumpet dance, for instance, by which the Blackamoor is first inveigled into the fair one’s toils, or in the slower pas de fascination by which the conquest of him is completed, Stravinsky’s sense of the ludicrous has turned two slender occasions to most diverting account. Conceive a tender, sentimental passage between two grotesque dolls, and in these engaging little melodies you have the exact expression of the absurd situation. Even more ingenious, as a piece of clever orchestration, is a passage at the outset of the opening scene, where the composer succeeds not only in reproducing (with the merest note of burlesque) the peculiar sounds of an antique hurdy-gurdy, but weaves the opposition between two such competing instruments into a most entertaining and harmonious discord. As to the music which hurries the revels of the carnival upon their riotous course, it has the true note of full-blooded vigorous enjoyment—a rhythmic pulsing quality which belongs to the fresh and unsophisticated pleasure of simple folk not too much hampered by conventions.
“Pétrouchka,” however, would fall short of its ultimate effect but for the subtle art of its interpreters. Kotchetovsky, as the Blackamoor, wonderfully realises the undisciplined temper and coarse appetites which are all of humanity that this puppet has acquired; and the Dancer, whether played by Karsavina or Nijinska, pirouettes or tiptoes with the exactitude of mechanical action. But to the presentation of Pétrouchka Nijinsky brings more than mere cleverness. There is a touch of diablerie in his impersonation of the luckless puppet which most poignantly conveys the sense of atrophied humanity. It is not merely that from his jerky half-mechanical motions one can deduce the exact anatomy of the doll, a joint here, a loosely hung limb there; he puts the whole character upon a plane above the level of mere grotesquery. Pétrouchka in his hands acquires a significance which places him amongst the centaurs and other half-brute, half-human creatures of mythology. That the ballet is thereby endowed with a meaning, an inwardness, which it might not otherwise possess, must be accounted as a tribute to the dancer’s genius.