Diaghilev: A Life
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Featuring an eight-page gallery of full-color illustrations, here is a major new biography of Serge Diaghilev, founder and impresario of the Ballets Russes, who revolutionized ballet by bringing together composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, dancers and choreographers such as Nijinsky and Karsavina, Fokine and Balanchine, and artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Bakst, and Goncharova. An accomplished, flamboyant impresario of all the arts, Diaghilev became a legendary figure. Growing up in a minor noble family in remote Perm, he would become a central figure in the artistic worlds of Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid during the golden age of modern art. He lived through bankruptcy, war, revolution, and exile. Furthermore he lived openly as a homosexual and his liaisons, most famously with Nijinsky, and his turbulent friendships with Stravinsky, Coco Chanel, Prokofiev, and Jean Cocteau gave his life an exceptionally dramatic quality. Scheijen's magnificent biography, based on extensive research in little known archives, especially in Russia, brings fully to life a complex and powerful personality with boundless creative energy. The New York Times - Jennifer B. McDonald Diaghilev, as one gathers from Sjeng Scheijen's meaty and rigorously researched new biography, could never have been any other than he was—a brilliant promoter of innovation, an unapologetic lover of chaos, an impeccable judge of both art and the public's hunger for it…The dominant facets of that life…are well chronicled. The contribution of Scheijen…is a scholarly synthesis of previous accounts, buttressed by material from heretofore unplumbed archives. His Diaghilev: A Life is especially excellent on its subject's formative years, on how the chubby boy became the hedonist to whom, as Cocteau once wrote, "life was tolerable only to the extent to which he could summon up marvels."
Translators' NoteIntroduction: Death in Venice 11 A Big Head, 1872-1880 82 The Fruits of Enlightenment, 1879-1890 193 Rise and Fall, 1890-1891 334 Student Years: A Visit to Tolstoy, 1891-1893 415 Student Years: Alexandre Benois, 1890-1894 506 'The Serge Diaguileff Museum': St Petersburg, Rome, Genoa, Paris, 1894-1896 627 Charlatan and Charmer, 1895-1898 738 'I'm full of big plans!', 1897-1898 859 The World of Art, 1898-1900 9710 The Sylvia Debacle, 1900-1902 11111 The Hour of Reckoning, 1902-1905 12412 The 'Homosexual Clique', 1906-1907 14013 Tsar Boris and Tsar Sergey, 1907-1908 15314 The Rise of the Ballets Russes, 1908-1909 17015 Bakst and the Art of Seduction, 1909-1910 18816 Emergence of a Genius, 1910-1911 20617 Petrushka, 1911-1912 22018 Prelude to a Scandal, 1911-1912 23419 A Year of Risky Experiments, 1912-1913 25120 Time of Troubles, 1913-1914 27421 'Let us be resolute and energetic', 1914-1915 29422 A Parade of Revolutions, 1915-1917 30923 A Letter from Nouvel, 1917-1919 33324 To the Brink of Catastrophe, 1919-1922 35125 A Lifeline from Monte Carlo, 1922-1924 37426 The Soviet Union Strikes Back, 1924-1927 39527 The Final Curtain, 1928-1929 418Notes 445Bibliography 505Illustration Credits 518Author's Acknowledgments 521Index 522
