The de Basil crowd eventually arrived at a South Brooklyn pier, barely in time, on a holiday afternoon before the Metropolitan opening. The rush, the drive, the complicated business of clearing through customs promised more headaches, more heartaches, and yet more unforeseen expense. We now had two companies merged for the Metropolitan Opera House engagement. In this respect we had been fortunate, for the de Basil scenery and costumes were in a pitiable state of disrepair. Since there was neither sufficient time nor money for their rehabilitation, we provided both, and, meanwhile, had the advantage of the de Cuevas works.
De Basil had been able to make but few additions to his repertoire during the lean and long South American hegira. These were Yara and Cain and Abel. Yara had been choreographed by Psota, to a score by Francisco Mignone. It was a lengthy attempt to bring to the stage a Brazilian legend. It had striking sets and costumes by Candido Portinari, and little else. Cain and Abel was a juicy tid-bit in which David Lichine perpetrated a “treatment” of the Genesis tale to, of all things, cuttings and snippets from Wagner’s Die Götter-Dammerung. It was a silly business.
The four works from the Marquis de Cuevas repertoire were given a wider public, and helped a bad situation. Sebastian, with an excitingly dramatic score by Gian-Carlo Menotti, his first for ballet, had been staged by Edward Caton, in a setting by Oliver Smith. It made for a striking piece of theatre. The Mute Wife was a light but amusing comedy, adapted by the American dancer-choreographer, Antonia Cobos, from the familiar tale by Anatole France, The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, to Paganini melodies, principally his Perpetual Motion, orchestrated by Vittorio Rieti. The third work, Constantia, was a classical ballet by William Dollar, done to Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F Minor, enlisting the services of Rosella Hightower, André Eglevsky, and Yvonne Patterson. Its title, confusing to some, referred to Chopin’s “Ideal Woman,” Constantia Gladowska, to whom the composer dedicated the musical work.
Thanks to Ballet Associates in America, there was one new work. It was Camille, staged by John Taras, in quite unique settings by Cecil Beaton, for Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin. It was a balletic attempt to tell the familiar Dumas tale. In this case, the music, instead of being out of Traviata by Verdi to use stud-book terminology, consisted of Franz Schubert melodies, orchestrated by Vittorio Rieti. It was not the success one hoped and, after seeing a later one by Tudor, to say nothing of one by Dolin, I am more and more persuaded that Camille belongs to Dumas and Verdi, to Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt, not to ballet. There was also an unimportant but fairly amusing little Pas de Trois, for Markova, Dolin, and Eglevsky, set by Jerome Robbins to the Minuet of the Will o’ the Wisps, and the Dance of the Sylphs, from Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust. It was a burlesque, highlighted by the use of a bit of the Rákoczy March as an overture, loud enough and big enough to suggest that a ballet company of gargantuan proportions was to be revealed by the rising curtain.
The trans-continental tour compounded troubles and annoyances with heavy financial losses. The Original Ballet Russe carried with it the heavy liability of a legend to a vast new audience. This audience had heard of the symphonic ballets; there were nostalgic tales told them by their elders about the “baby ballerinas,” Toumanova, Baronova, Riabouchinska. There were no symphonic ballets. The “baby ballerinas” had grown up and were in other pastures. The repertoire and the interpretations revealed the ravages of time. Perhaps the truth was that legends have an unhappy trick of falling short of reality.
While the long tour was in progress, the Marquis de Cuevas was making arrangements with the Principality of Monaco for a season at Monte Carlo with his own company. Immediately on getting wind of this, the “Colonel” did his best to try to doublecross the Marquis. This time, the “Colonel” did not succeed. For several seasons, the de Cuevas company, under the title Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo, largely peopled with American dancers, including Rosella Hightower, Marjorie Tallchief, Jocelyn Vollmar, Ana Ricarda, and others, and under the choreographic direction of John Taras, functioned there. When his Monte Carlo contract was at an end, the name of the company was changed to the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.
In 1951, the Marquis brought his company to New York for a season at the Century Theatre. It was completely unsuccessful, and while the losses were less than the initial American season, when it was called Ballet International, since there were no production costs to be met, much less a theatre to be bought, it was indeed an unfortunate occasion. The debacle, I believe, was not entirely the fault of the Marquis, since the entire season was mismanaged and mishandled from every point of view.
The long, unhappy tour of the Original Ballet Russe dragged its weary way to a close. Nothing I could imagine would be more welcome than that desired event. When it was all over, I was happy to see them push off to Europe. The losses I incurred were so considerable that it still is a painful subject on which to ponder, even from this distance of time. Suffice it to say they were very considerable.
The Original Ballet Russe had been living on its capital far too long. In London, in 1947, the “Colonel” made an attempt to reorganize his company. Clutching at straws, the shrewd “Colonel,” I am sure, realized that if he had any chance for survival, it would be on the basis of a successful London season, scene of his first triumphs. For this purpose, he formed a new company, since almost none of the original organization survived. It was a failure.
Nothing daunted, in 1951, he was preparing to try again. Death intervened, and Vassily Grigorievitch Voskresensky, better known to the world of ballet as Colonel W. de Basil, was gathered to his fathers. I was shocked but not surprised when the news reached me. He had, I knew, been living a devil-may-care existence. We had quarrelled, argued, fought. We had, on the other hand, worked together for a common end and with a common belief and purpose.