<\/p>
\u2018I love ballet and am more interested in it than anything else.\u2019 When Igor Stravinsky<\/a> wrote these words in 1911, he was basking in the afterglow of the phenomenal success of his early ballets The Firebird and Petrushka.<\/strong><\/p>\n But this commitment to ballet remained with the Russian composer for life. Indeed, it became the focal point of his creativity and resulted in him composing a dozen highly distinctive ballet scores spanning a period of over 40 years, as well as many other works for the stage in which dance played an important role.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> \u00a0<\/p>\n That writing ballets assumed such importance for Stravinsky is all the more remarkable given the generally low status that had been accorded to the medium during his formative years. With the obvious exception of works by Tchaikovsky<\/a><\/strong> and Glazunov, ballet scores of the late 19th century were generally blighted with insipid, vulgar or inconsequential music that bore little relationship to what was happening on stage. Ballet plots were no better, beset as they often were with inane scenarios that were more concerned with spectacle than dramatic coherence.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> All this changed with Stravinsky. Under the charismatic influence of Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, the composer collaborated with a host of inspirational creative figures, from Fokine, Benois, Nijinsky and Balanchine to Bakst, Goncharova, Matisse and Picasso, and elevated ballet into a dazzling and vibrant medium of artistic expression. The\u00a0Times<\/i> critic, reviewing the Ballet Russes\u2019s appearances at Covent Garden in 1913, vividly communicated what was so novel and exciting about their achievements: \u2018The Russians have endowed us with a new art whose sense lies in the harmonious and free cooperation of men of the greatest distinction and daring in the four arts which go into the making of ballet. Music, colour, the poetry of original literary thought and the poetry of motion have never been so united, each indispensable, each illuming the others as by this company of great artists.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n But this was just the beginning. From the unknown 20-something first engaged by Diaghilev to a world-renowned composer in his 70s, Stravinsky continued to push <\/span>the artform in all manner of new directions <\/span>with a stream of notable ballets, each one inventive in its own distinctive way.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It would be difficult to overestimate the seismic impact of the Ballets Russes\u2019s first Paris season in 1909. Audiences were simply wowed by the spectacularly staged adaptation of the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Prince Igor<\/i> and elegant ballet confections such as Les Sylphides<\/i> which presented piano music by Chopin<\/a><\/strong> in orchestral garb. <\/span><\/p>\n The only missing link in this feast of attractions was a new and entirely original Russian ballet, which Diaghilev hoped would materialise by the 1910 season. His chief choreographer, Michel Fokine, had in fact sketched out a detailed scenario for such a work, entitling it The Firebird<\/i><\/a><\/strong> \u2013 an amalgamation of various Russian fairy-tales about a bird whose magic feather rescues a prince from the clutches of the evil demon Kashchei.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Finding someone who was willing to write the music was another matter. Diaghilev tried to interest several established Russian composers such as Lyadov and Nikolai Tcherepnin, but without success. Only his fourth choice, Rimsky-Korsakov\u2019s 28-year-old pupil Stravinsky, eagerly seized the opportunity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhich ballets are written by Stravinsky?<\/h2>\n
The Firebird <\/span>(1910)<\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n