Svengali of the Ballet

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 98, 9 May 1941, Page 5

Svengali of the Ballet

IAGHILEV was one of those men of abundant "energy and artistic perception whose genius lies not in giving personal expression to art, but in inspiring artists. I think, having in mind the quite reckless nature of his undertakings--money was never an object, but it was always forthcoming from one source or another-and the hysterical atmosphere in which he and his gifted satellites worked, that I might call him the Svengali of ballet. In St. Petersburg, before ballet absorbed his interest, he edited a journal which, as some of you who are students of modern art will know, injected fresh life into Russian painting. He took Russian pictures on exhibition to Paris before he brought ballet thither; he gave Russian opera and Russian music to the European world. But ballet became his obsession, and one cannot wonder, reading of the first impact of this combination of several arts upon the west, that Paris went wild-usually with enthusiasm, occasionally, as in the case of Nijinsky’s first appearance in "The Afternoon of a Faun," with rage and indignation. These were days when one might have seen Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky, Fokine, Ida -Rubenstein, all appearing in the one programme-several in the one ballet. Balletomanes will sigh that we shall not see their like again; and others of us, who are less than initiates, will admit that they must have made extraordinarily attractive entertainment.--(Book Talk by John Moffett, 4Y A, April 2.)