Prince Igor.—The red of the tents not “barbaric,” the paganism of the costumes a trifle faded, and the leaps of the warriors (Bolm, the “chief warrior,” you remember) not convincing. The mob, or “ensemble,” if you must, properly wild and abandoned. The music is the kind that you beat time to with your feet, you know—primitive I think they call it. Well, the “very moderns” failed us again—do you see?
L’Après Midi d’un Faune.—Green. Some how I was expecting purple, the hazy opaque purple of a woodland when the sun enters it from one side; and still I think that purple would have fitted the Debussy music and the mood of the faun,—a mood, of course dependent on the music. But it was green, with rather weak spots of red. This scene framed by a Greek border of pale and dark blue and white. In front of this frame, looking into the picture at the languid, piping faun, moved nymphs. They seemed part of the border—a decoration from an urn or from the walls of some temple. The faun leaves his knoll and moves into the decorative sphere of the maidens. Beautiful movement, repressed, conventionalized. A scarf is left by one of the maidens; they have all left the faun. He has nothing but this to remember them by. Returning to his mossy rock he possesses the scarf. No lover more delicately held the body of his love or with more reverence knelt toward her. The curtain lowers here—the faun is left to dream. “Now, look here, my friends,” as the Lecturer would say, stamping across the stage; “away with all this nonsense and hypocrisy, this clatter about ‘indecent,’ ‘revolting,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘offensive,’ ‘decadent,’ and such blabber! Admit that your life, you critics, living for art as you pretend to, is made up of just such things—in fact if you were honest you’d admit your entire life is wholly, first and last, rooted, aye, dwelling on just this episode, and yet you cry aloud unto the heavens ‘indecent,’ ‘revolting,’ ‘offensive’ when it is beautifully simple and much more perfectly presented before you than you’ll ever experience it yourself. And as for the substitution of the scarf, well, the psychology of the incident is perfect and the whole thing is heightened by art, my friends, art—and you of course, living as you do amongst the fleshpots and the Market Place and knowing not of the Groves of Dionysius and the Temples on the hillsides at Athens—can’t see it. Well. The gods have pity on you and may you be shown joy in the hereafter—God knows your chastity will keep you from it here.”
Le Spectre de la Rose.—Fragmentary concession to those who “loved” Les Sylphides and, botanically speaking, a “shoot” from that ballet and the (unpresented here) Papillons of Schumann. Necessary, no doubt, to remind us of our ballet history and, like historical data, necessary but uninteresting. Bakst’s bedroom setting does justify the presenting of this, however.
Soleil de Nuit.—M. Leonide Massine—Youth! If you were present at creation’s turmoil perhaps les Bergers would always have been delightful and les Paysannes always happy and colorful—and, of course, we would have had many more serious and glorious Bouffons! The purity of this ballet—color, music (Rimsky-Korsakov), dancing and pantomime—is astounding, and beautiful!
Cleopatre.—I have been to Egypt! All ages have known Cleopatra—her evil and magnificence; and none will forget that she had slaves. No age since hers can know of her allurements and the grandeur of her reign of the souls of two of her slaves as the Russians have shown them to ours! A temple in Egypt: of pillars once believed eternal, along the then sacred Nile. Amoun, one of her slaves, loving and loved by another, Ta-or, craves the caresses of the great Cleopatra! He succeeds: they are granted midst colorful revels, music made by Assyrians and dancing by dancers from Greece. The moment is too short ... he pays for it with his life. The revelers leave, and none in their indifference so cold as the Queen herself. In the thickness of a red evening, the hall deserted, one heart still beats. Ta-or grieves over her lost love—alone. I have been to Egypt ... learned the ways of women—and the world!