WAS THERE REALLY A “RIOT AT THE RITE”?
No scandal is more notorious than the riot that erupted at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 29 May 1913.
Or so every classical music novice is told. In fact, our animation about the Rite of Spring (watch) – Stravinsky’s ballet which premiered at the Parisian theatre that evening – only fans the flames of the legend.
“The curtain opened on a group of knock-kneed and long-braided lolitas, jumping up and down [and] the storm broke,” recounted the composer. Fifty years later, one of the dancers Lydia Sokolova (real name the not-quite-exotic-enough Hilda Munnings) recalled an audience raring for a fight: “They had got themselves all ready. They didn’t even let the music be played for the overture. As soon as it was known that the conductor was there, the uproar began.”
We have been left reports of fist-fights, catcalling, objects being pelted at the orchestra and challenges to a duel. Apparently, dozens of people were arrested by the police. What is pretty remarkable is that for such an oft-mentioned event, barely any of these incidents can be verified. In fact, the idea that a “riot” even took place at all only crystallised over the decades following the premiere.
Undoubtedly the audience were tantalised by the prospect of some outrageously modern spectacle; Debussy’s Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune, premiered a year before with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (watch), had raised more than a few eyebrows on account of its bizarre mix of surrealist eroticism and archaic fantasy. But the Rite was different. It was loud. It was vulgar. And it glorified the primitive peoples who danced to celebrate their relationship with the earth. Not what the Parisian aristocrats – bedecked in top hats and fur – were expecting. This was no “classical ballet”.
Which leads us to suspect that part of the problem was Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography itself. Certainly, when the concert version of Stravinsky’s ballet premiered a year later, it met little resistance. In fact, Stravinsky was carried out from the hall, held aloft by his loving admirers: an emperor of the avant-garde. Nijinsky’s choreography was as grating as Stravinsky’s discordant brass and the polyrhythmic thuds. It pulled down its dancers to the ground – the opposite of Petipa’s ballerinas, who floated through the air with gravity-defying gracefulness. Just as offensive were Nicholas Roerich’s costumes. Covered from head to toe, the dancers barely showed any skin. Yes, this was primal – but no: not sexy.
But could unconventional dancing and costumes cause a riot? Some say the riot was in fact class warfare between the audience’s various factions – the youthful avant-gardists in the stalls, whom Jean Cocteau called “the aesthetic crowd...would applaud novelty simply to show their contempt for the people in the boxes.”
What we do know is that the performance continued to the end and that there was, in fact...an ovation! And so the workings of myth and legend play their part; like many Great Works of Art our understanding of their meaning evolves over time and they take on a new life of their own.