PeterRS Posted March 21 Posted March 21 To be openly gay in the latter days of the Russian Empire could be extremely risky. The celebrated composer Tchaikovsky, most famous for his music to the ballets “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker” and “Sleeping Beauty”, was very actively gay but had agonized while keeping his homosexuality private. Surprisingly, perhaps, his younger brother Modest was also gay. Unlike Pyotr, he had no qualms about it being known that he was gay. Even so, for more than a century his native country denied what was the obvious: Tchaikovsky was not gay, all claimed. Yet in 2013 as his own purges against gay men and women were breeding in his mind, Putin declared on Russian State Channel 1, “Tchaikovsky was gay – although it’s true that we do not love him because of that – but he was a great musician and we all love his music. So what?” Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893 was officially due to cholera. For a while some researchers believed he was forced to commit suicide after a threat of being ‘outed’ by a group of princeling students. That theory has now been well and truly debunked. Whatever the true reason for his death, Tchaikovsky was just 53. It is known that Tsar Alexander III revered the composer’s works, and members of the Imperial family frequently attended his operas and ballets. According to a diary entry by Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Tchaikovsky’s death “grieved the Emperor and Empress greatly.” One Russian had few concerns about keeping his gay life private. An avowed homosexual, he was destined to change forever the way the world looked at art and the performing arts. Born in 1872 and so almost 21 when Tchaikovsky died, Serge Diaghilev, son of a bankrupt vodka distiller, spent his early years near the Russian city of Perm. At the age of 18 he moved to the capital, St. Petersburg, where he soon managed to find himself part of an artistically-inclined gay clique. With these new friends, he would socialize, swap boyfriends and occasionally cruise for trade in the city’s parks. According to the composer Nicolas Nabokov, “he was perhaps the first grand homosexual who asserted himself and was accepted as such by society.” Serge Diaghilev painted by Leon Bakst In the first decade of the 20th century, St. Petersburg was the place to be if you wanted to work in the classical arts. By 1906 Diaghilev was making a name for himself. He was asked to mount an exhibition of Russian art in Paris. Two years later he again visited Paris with a production of Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” featuring the most famous bass voice of the age, Fyodor Chaliapin. Chaliapin’s overly grand grave at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery But it was ballet the French really wanted to see, for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg was famed as the finest in the world. So in 1909 Diaghilev persuaded its best dancers to spend their summer holidays in Paris where he would mount a season performed under the title Les Ballets Russes. The season was a massive success. The exciting new choreography and bold new designs had a far more general appeal than to just the usual aristocratic ballet audience. As important was the astounding virtuosity of the lead dancers. Anna Pavlova (the Pavlova dessert of meringue, fruit and lashings of cream is named after her) was one of the prima ballerinas, but it was the astonishing lead male dancer who utterly electrified Paris. Everyone wanted to see the young, withdrawn and innocent star, Vaslav Nijinsky. Other than showing Paris his extraordinary leaps when he seemed suspended in the air and his supreme emotional involvement on stage, Diaghilev had another reason for wanting Nijinsky on this tour. The two had become lovers with Diaghilev having an almost Svengali-like hold over his 20-year-old protégé. Becoming a full member of the Imperial Ballet at the tender age of 17, Nijinsky quickly became a star. He also attracted the attention of the very rich playboy Prince Pavel Lvov. Lvov took the shy dancer under his wing – and into his bed – showering him and his family with gifts. Perhaps surprisingly today, given the times, Nijinsky’s mother was quite relieved about his homosexuality. She believed that marriage would only impede his career and had been proud to see her son with such a fine member of the establishment as Prince Lvov – and certainly grateful for his financial help. Yet Nijinsky was probably not at this time homosexual. “I loved him because I knew he wished me well,” he is quoted as saying about Prince Lvov. Well? Perhaps, but Lvov was also a good friend of Diaghilev and had no hesitation in lending him Nijinsky for a night or two. Innocent though he might have been, the young dancer knew well that Diaghilev could further his career. So he left Lvov to live with Diaghilev. Diaghilev with the composer Igor stravinsky So successful was that season of Les Ballet Russes that the ensemble was to continue to appear in Paris before and after World War 1, soon becoming a full-time company. The scope of Diaghilev’s achievement was enormous. Composers like Stravinsky, artists like Picasso and Matisse, and fashion designer Coco Chanel were engaged for works that were becoming increasingly more avant-garde. And then there were the scandals! Nijinsky wanted more artistic freedom. Diaghilev let him choreograph a work to the music of Claude Debussy. In “L’après-midi d’un faune”, Nijinsky caused a sensation when he appeared to be slowly masturbating with a scarf prior to a brief orgasmic shudder. But the outcry that followed was nothing compared to the riot which took place during the first night of Nijinsky’s choreography for Stravinsky’s brutal, pagan-like “Rite of Spring” which ends with a human sacrifice. Paris was in uproar. No one was more pleased than Diaghilev. “Exactly what I wanted,” he exclaimed! A painting of Nijinsky in “L’après-midi d’un faune” Diaghilev had a premonition he would die at sea. So when the company travelled to South America in 1913, he did not go. Unknown to him, one of what we would call today the company’s groupies, a Hungarian Romola de Pulszky, had her eye on Nijinsky and also arranged to be on board the vessel. Despite the fact that neither knew the language the other spoke, she made sure they became close on the long sea voyage. She informed him she was a Hungarian prima ballerina. When he discovered this was a lie, he ignored her. Yet she persisted and over time they became friends. Even after she was informed he was homosexual, she arranged their marriage in Buenos Aires. In fact it was within just a few days of the marriage that Nijinsky found out he had been duped. “I realised I had made a mistake, but the mistake was irreparable. I had put myself in the hands of someone who did not love me.” Worse, Romola did not even like ballet. Ballet was what Nijinsky lived for. On learning the news Diaghilev was incensed! He immediately fired his lover. What did he care? There were plenty more young men in the company and he was to be involved in affairs with several of them. For Nijinsky it was a total disaster. It’s hard to imagine the stress such a sensitive individual must have felt at being dismissed from the Ballet Russes, his sham marriage and the death around that time of several of his relatives. At his wife’s urging, he attempted to run his own company – without success. Soon he started suffering from schizophrenia. Over the years the most famous male dancer of all time was examined by many psychiatrists including Sigmund Freud. To no avail. After his last public performance aged just 27 he spent the rest of his life in an out of asylums. A typical impresario whose love of his work often exceeded his ability to finance it, Diaghilev continued to invite an ever-expanding group of young artists and composers to work with his company. By far his greatest legacy is that from the Ballet Russes came the founders of London’s Royal Ballet and New York’s City Ballet. A third completely resurrected the Paris Opera Ballet. All three companies are now amongst the world’s finest. Introduction to Diaghilev from a London Exhibition Diaghilev himself died penniless in Venice aged 57. Although his career with the Ballet Russes had spanned less than 25 years, in that time he had transformed the worlds of music, dance, theatre and the visual arts as no one else in history. numerito, Ruthrieston and bkkmfj2648 1 2 Quote
