Editing The Rite of Spring (section)

=== Premiere ===
[[File:RiteofSpringDancers.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Dancers in Nicholas Roerich's original costumes. From left, Julitska, [[Marie Rambert]], Jejerska, Boni, Boniecka, Faithful]]
Paris's [[Théâtre des Champs-Élysées]] was a new structure, which had opened on 2 April 1913 with a programme celebrating the works of many of the leading composers of the day. The theatre's manager, [[Gabriel Astruc]], was determined to house the 1913 Ballets Russes season, and paid Diaghilev the large sum of 25,000 francs per performance, double what he had paid the previous year.<ref>Kelly p. 276</ref> The programme for 29 May 1913, as well as the Stravinsky premiere, included ''Les Sylphides'', [[Carl Maria von Weber|Weber]]'s ''[[Le Spectre de la Rose]]'' and Borodin's ''Polovtsian Dances''.<ref name=K284>Kelly, pp. 284–285</ref> Ticket sales for the evening, ticket prices being doubled for a premiere, amounted to 35,000 francs.<ref>Kelly, pp. 305, 315: Gustav Linor, ''[[Comœdia]]'' 30 May 1913, reported 38,000, while a later review in ''Comœdia'' on 5 June reported 35,000</ref> A dress rehearsal was held in the presence of members of the press and assorted invited guests. According to Stravinsky, all went peacefully.<ref name=S46 /> However, the critic of ''[[L'Écho de Paris]]'', [[Adolphe Boschot]], foresaw possible trouble; he wondered how the public would receive the work, and suggested that they might react badly if they thought they were being mocked.<ref name=K282>Kelly, p. 282</ref>

On the evening of 29 May, Gustav Linor reported, "Never&nbsp;... has the hall been so full, or so resplendent; the stairways and the corridors were crowded with spectators eager to see and to hear".<ref>Kelly, p. 304, quoting Gustav Linor writing in ''[[Comœdia]]'', 30 May 1913, ''At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées: Le Sacre du printemps''</ref> The evening began with ''Les Sylphides'', in which Nijinsky and Karsavina danced the main roles.<ref name=K284 /> ''Le Sacre'' followed. Some eyewitnesses and commentators said that the disturbances in the audience began during the Introduction, and grew noisier when the curtain rose on the stamping dancers in "Augurs of Spring". But Taruskin asserts, "it was not Stravinsky's music that did the shocking. It was the ugly earthbound lurching and stomping devised by Vaslav Nijinsky."<ref>{{cite web |last=Taruskin |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Taruskin |date=14 September 2012 |title=Shocker Cools into a 'Rite' of Passage |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/arts/music/rite-of-spring-cools-into-a-rite-of-passage.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220905134424/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/arts/music/rite-of-spring-cools-into-a-rite-of-passage.html |archive-date=2022-09-05 |access-date=28 November 2014 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> [[Marie Rambert]], who was working as an assistant to Nijinsky, recalled later that it was soon impossible to hear the music on the stage.<ref name=H28>Hill, pp. 28–30</ref> In his autobiography, Stravinsky writes that the derisive laughter that greeted the first bars of the Introduction disgusted him, and that he left the auditorium to watch the rest of the performance from the stage wings. The demonstrations, he says, grew into "a terrific uproar" which, along with the on-stage noises, drowned out the voice of Nijinsky who was shouting the step numbers to the dancers.<ref name=S46>Stravinsky 1962, pp. 46–47</ref> Two years after the premiere the journalist and photographer [[Carl Van Vechten]] claimed in his book ''Music After the Great War'' that the person behind him became carried away with excitement, and "began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists".<ref name=White177 /> In 1916, in a letter not published until 2013, Van Vechten admitted he had actually attended the second night, among other changes of fact.<ref>''The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten'', edited by Edward Burns, Columbia University Press, 2013, pp. 850–851</ref>

[[File:Russian Ballet in Paris - New York Times 1913-06-08.png|thumb|right|''[[The New York Times]]'' reported the sensational premiere, nine days after the event.<ref>''[[The New York Times]]'' (8 June 1913). [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/06/08/100627576.pdf "Parisians Hiss New Ballet"]. Retrieved 4 November 2014.</ref>]]
At that time, a Parisian ballet audience typically consisted of two diverse groups: the wealthy and fashionable set, who would be expecting to see a traditional performance with beautiful music, and a [[Bohemianism|"Bohemian"]] group who, the poet-philosopher [[Jean Cocteau]] asserted, would "acclaim, right or wrong, anything that is new because of their hatred of the boxes".<ref>Ross, p. 74</ref> Monteux believed that the trouble began when the two factions began attacking each other, but their mutual anger was soon diverted towards the orchestra: "Everything available was tossed in our direction, but we continued to play on". Around forty of the worst offenders were ejected—possibly with the intervention of the police, although this is uncorroborated. Through all the disturbances the performance continued without interruption. The unrest receded significantly during Part II, and by some accounts Maria Piltz's rendering of the final "Sacrificial Dance" was watched in reasonable silence. At the end there were several curtain calls for the dancers, for Monteux and the orchestra, and for Stravinsky and Nijinsky before the evening's programme continued.<ref name=K292>Kelly, pp. 292–294</ref>

Among the more hostile press reviews was that of ''[[Le Figaro]]''{{'}}s critic [[Henri Quittard]], who called the work "a laborious and puerile barbarity" and added "We are sorry to see an artist such as M. Stravinsky involve himself in this disconcerting adventure".<ref>Kelly p. 307, quoting [[Henri Quittard|Quittard]]'s report in ''[[Le Figaro]]'', 31 May 1913</ref> On the other hand, Gustav Linor, writing in the leading theatrical magazine ''[[Comœdia]]'', thought the performance was superb, especially that of Maria Piltz; the disturbances, while deplorable, were merely "a rowdy debate" between two ill-mannered factions.<ref name=K304>Kelly pp. 304–305, quoting Linor's report in ''[[Comœdia]]'', 30 May 1913</ref> Emile Raudin, of ''Les Marges'', who had barely heard the music, wrote: "Couldn't we ask M. Astruc&nbsp;... to set aside one performance for well-intentioned spectators?&nbsp;... We could at least propose to evict the female element".<ref name=K292 /> The composer [[Alfredo Casella]] thought that the demonstrations were aimed at Nijinsky's choreography rather than at the music,<ref>Kelly, pp. 327–328, translated from [[Alfredo Casella|Casella, Alfredo]]: ''Strawinski''. La Scuola, Brescia 1961. {{OCLC|12830261}}</ref> a view shared by the critic [[Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi]], who wrote: "The idea was excellent, but was not successfully carried out". Calvocoressi failed to observe any direct hostility to the composer—unlike, he said, the premiere of Debussy's ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' in 1902.<ref>Calvocoressi, pp. 244–245</ref> Of later reports that the veteran composer [[Camille Saint-Saëns]] had stormed out of the premiere, Stravinsky observed that this was impossible; Saint-Saëns did not attend.<ref>Kelly, p. 283</ref>{{refn|group=n|Monteux's biographer records that Saint-Saëns walked out of the Paris premiere of the concert version of ''The Rite'', which Monteux conducted in April 1914; Saint-Saëns opined that Stravinsky was "mad".<ref>Canarina, p. 47</ref>}} Stravinsky also rejected Cocteau's story that, after the performance, Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Diaghilev and Cocteau himself took a cab to the [[Bois de Boulogne]] where a tearful Diaghilev recited poems by [[Alexander Pushkin|Pushkin]]. Stravinsky merely recalled a celebratory dinner with Diaghilev and Nijinsky, at which the impresario expressed his entire satisfaction with the outcome.<ref>Stravinsky and Craft 1959, pp. 47–48</ref> To Maximilien Steinberg, a former fellow-pupil under Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky wrote that Nijinsky's choreography had been "incomparable: with the exception of a few places, everything was as I wanted it".<ref name=H109 />