Moreover the art of the male dancer, which had almost died out in other countries, has not only been kept alive in Russia but has been developed equally with that of the ballerina. The “principal boy” of the English stage is, as we know, always a girl. A note of character and energy disappeared from the ballet when it became solely the medium of feminine dancing. The strength and breadth of the Russian ballet have gained enormously by the retention and development of male dancing. Indeed its virility is one of the most striking features. The fierceness of the warrior dances in Prince Igor and the adroitness of the dance of buffoons in Le Pavillon d’Armide are among its most memorable achievements. Scheherazade without Nijinsky would be like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. We realise now that without the masculine element the ballet is as incomplete as an orchestra without the bass.
In Russia the music of the ballet has received the same careful consideration as the choregraphy. In some cases, music which was not written specially for the purpose has been adapted to the uses of the ballet. But latterly it has been the custom of the directors to apply to the leading composers of the day for ballet music written expressly for a given subject. In earlier times it was of course the custom for composers to write the music for the ballets that were interpolated in the opera. Tchaikovsky was one of the first to compose a ballet independent of opera and complete in itself. This was The Sleeping Beauty, first presented in 1890, in his own opinion the best thing he ever did, with the exception of his opera, Eugène Onegin. He showed his recognition of the necessity of an absolute co-ordination among the collaborators of the ballet by working in accordance with the suggestions of the choregrapher. The maître de ballet, after composing the design of the dances that were to express the spirit and action of the piece, sent to the musician a detailed schedule of the music required; thus:
No. 1. Musique douce, 64 mesures.
No. 2. L’arbre s’éclaire. Musique pétillant de 8 mesures.
No. 3. L’entrée des enfants. Musique bruyante et joyeuse de 24 mesures, etc.
Casse-Noisette, another ballet by the same composer, appeared in 1892. The original and powerful music of Borodin has been pressed into the service of the ballet, and entire ballets have been written by Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazounov and Arensky. In the execution of the music there is the same specialisation. The leaders of the orchestra qualify specially for the ballet, having no part in the orchestra at any other time.
It is clear, therefore, that in Russia the ballet has long been regarded as a serious art-form. A keen and intelligent criticism and an enthusiastic public interest provide it with that bracing atmosphere without which it is difficult for any composite form of art to thrive. On the nights devoted exclusively to the ballet, the large Marianski Theatre is so crowded that it is difficult to obtain a seat. Most of the stalls and boxes are subscribed for, and the people renew their subscriptions year after year. Mr Rothay Reynolds relates how, when an elderly gentlemen who for a great number of years had had a seat in the front row suddenly died, a friend of his rushed to the theatre and offered the young lady at the box-office twenty guineas if she would secure him the seat. “Alas!” she said, “I have already received over a hundred applications.”
When the Russian ballet was being performed for the first time at Covent Garden, an enthusiast was heard to express his intention of emigrating to Russia in order to see the ballet in its true home. If he had carried out his intention it is to be feared that he would have suffered grievous disappointment. For it is a great misapprehension to suppose that the Russian ballet as it has been seen in Paris and London is typical of the official ballet at St Petersburg and Moscow. When the Diaghilew company first appeared at the Theatre du Châtelet, the republican convictions of Paris received a shock. Could any good thing come out of Tsardom? Had autocracy succeeded where the alliance of liberty, fraternity and equality had failed? Was it then true that venerable tradition, assisted by a bureaucratic regime, was a kinder nursing mother to the arts than the revolutionary spirit? Little by little the truth leaked out. The Russian ballet, which had been welcomed as the most modern manifestation of theatrical art, was not traditional but revolutionary. It was not the child of the official art of St Petersburg but the outcast. Its leaders were dangerous innovators whom the intransigent conservatives had expelled as hastily as if they had been political agitators. Paris was reassured.
The truth is that the excellence of the Imperial School of Ballet of which I have spoken is an excellence of method and technique rather than of spirit and conception. In ideals the Imperial Ballet has not travelled far from those of Milan in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. It has elaborated and refined, but it has not greatly widened them. The visitor at the St Petersburg Opera House would discover that the unmeaning and unbeautiful acrobatics of an earlier day have not yet altogether disappeared. He would find that the ballet in Aida, for example, does not differ in many material points, excepting always the accomplishment of the performers, from what he has been accustomed to see in Milan or Vienna. It was in Russia that the spirit of criticism gave rise to new ideas, but the exponents of these new ideas came into sharp collision with the authorities at the Imperial theatres of St Petersburg and Moscow.
The spectacles which have been seen in London and Paris—some of which have never been produced in Russia—are the production of a group of daring and subversive artists, whom M. Serge de Diaghilew, the organiser of the ballets, has gathered round him—notably M. Fokine, the choregraphic director, MM. Leon Bakst and Benois, the designers of the scenery and costume, M. Tcherepnin, the musical composer and conductor, and of course M. Nijinsky and Mme Karsavina. M. Fokine, it is true, is the assistant ballet-master at the St Petersburg Opera, but he is said to be in command there only at the rarest intervals. M. Bakst has not worked for the Imperial theatres, and M. Tcherepnin comes, not from the St Petersburg Opera, but from the Conservatorium, where he is in charge of the orchestral class. They are able, of course, to avail themselves of the marvellous technical powers of the dancers who have joined them, practically all of whom were trained at the Imperial School of Ballet; but few of these are now regular members of the corps, and Nijinsky, the greatest genius of them all, recently received his formal discharge at the hands of the St Petersburg authorities. Long tradition, careful science and State patronage helped to make of the Imperial Ballet an elaborate, smoothly-working and faultless piece of theatrical mechanism; it only wanted the breath of genius to give it artistic life.