AN ALMEE. “SHEHERAZADE” BALLET
THE THREE KNOCKS
Resolutely Diaghileff turned his co=workers towards the theater. The time was propitious. Vsevolojsky, the director of the Imperial theaters, had just resigned his position which he had filled so brilliantly. Himself a dilettante nobleman and a man of good taste he had personally designed most of the costumes that, under his direction, were built for the ballet and the operas. He had to a large extent reconstructed the Russian and foreign repertoire, devoting himself to Tchaikovsky and making a place for Wagner. A galaxy of stars surrounded him. Marius Petitpas, the greatest living choreographer, exercised his successful dictatorship over the ballet. A brilliant young woman, just out of school, was about to eclipse the celebrated Italian virtuosos. Highly respected painters—the Shishkovs and the Botcharovs—who were experts at the art of stage decoration, executed the ideas of their director. In short, he did everything. Was it his fault that his activity fell within the worst epoch of a century that was called the stupid century? Is he to be blamed that the sources of his inspiration and the quality of the documents consulted by him bore the marks of that terrible decadence of the artistic instinct of which the year 1900 marks the climax and presages its end? However that may be, he prepared a glorious end for an obsolete art. The old opera passed away in beauty.
Yet with all the extraordinary perfection of execution, a certain uneasiness was germinating. Vague manifestations of independence were threatening the rigorous traditional discipline. In the midst of this crisis the helm was given to a young man. Prince Serge Volkonsky, who had distinguished himself in the Court theater by his splendid bearing and his clever acting, belonged to one of the noblest Russian families. His grandfather had taken part in the famous “Decembrist insurrection” of 1825; his grandmother had followed her husband to his Siberian convict prison with a devotion that inspired Nekrasov to write a celebrated poem. Volkonsky let the dead bury their dead and from the very first made his appeal to the young men and women—to Diaghileff and his friends. They plunged into their work: a revival of Delibes’ “Sylvia” was decided upon.
The Mir Iskousstva painters agreed to make their first attack upon the stage together. Accordingly, they divided up the work by acts, Alexander Benois leading—Benois who even today, after his successful collaboration with Stravinsky, retains a real feeling of reverence for Delibes whom he places, without hesitation, in a class with Wagner. Bakst and Serov also collaborated.
But the opera was never put on. There is a veritable hoode about this “Sylvia”, which kept haunting the Russian artists and yet was never produced. The late Andrianov, an exceedingly good dancer, was about to show an abridgement or sketch of this piece, but the attempt came to naught; Fokine dreamed about it vainly for many years.
As to this first attempt at cooperative work, it failed for personal reasons. From the beginning Volkonsky felt his prestige as manager
