The Riotous Premiere of "The Rite of Spring"

 "The pagans on-stage made pagans of the audience." - Thomas Kelly, on the premiere of The Rite of Spring

Ninety-six years ago on May 29th 1913 at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the most infamous opening-night scandal occurred when Les Ballets Russes staged the first performance of The Rite of Spring - a ballet with music by the young Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinksy. Before the evening was over, the audience - primevally provoked by the brutal, rhythmic music and primitive dance - would erupt in riot. Literally taking what Longinus had written in the first century of the common era in his treatise, On the Sublime - that art should arouse emotion, pleasingly "rape' the soul, and the reader or listener's response is necessary to 'complete' the art - the usually respectful Parisian crowd responded by whistling, booing, hissing, shouting, fist-fighting and cane-hitting one another in the aisles and perhaps even (if we are to believe some of the more theatrical accounts) barking like dogs.

The Rite of Spring was a radical, revolutionary moment in art and, as a clarion call for modern music, was as much of a precursor to rock as the blues. The simultaneously primitive and modern orchestration challenged the early twentieth century's notion of what music could be, and introduced (and in time demanded) the right to shock.

As the lights went down at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées, the audience was immediately tested by the prelude which began with an unaccompanied instrument that was unrecognisable - a bassoon played at its highest register. This gave way to a cacophony recreating the Creation, before an ominous pause followed by an incessant rhythmic chord that introduced the dancers and the plot. The dancing was as confrontational, un-Spring-like, chaotic and - at times - ugly and contorted as the music. A series of ritualistic settings depicting fertility rites in an imaginary pagan Russia further outraged an audience more accustomed to the tranquillity and conventionality ofSwan Lake.

By intermission, the police were called in to restore order amongst an audience divided as to whether they were witnessing genius or heresy. The furore worsened in the second half culminating in full-scale riot as the jerky, profane, Wicker Man-like "sacrificial dance" finale unfolded. The pandemonium was such that the orchestra couldn't hear itself play and the dancers couldn't hear the orchestra. Nijinsky stood in the wings frantically shouting instructions to the dancers. The Ballets Russes director attempted to diffuse the situation by flicking the house lights on and off (why he thought that would help I'm not sure; a heavily 'shroomed Julian and I once employed the same bizarre tactics when there was a knock at our door and we tried to pretend we weren't home). Stravinsky, who had fallen in love with his earth-shaking music of the spheres, could not understand why others were not hearing it as he heard it; distraught, he fled the theatre before the end.

The premiere night of The Rite Of Spring was a scandalous but seminal event. Stravinsky's orchestration would undergo a few revisions before finding a more welcoming audience and enduring popularity particularly after the score was prominently featured in Disney'sFantasia. The 29th May 1913 audience - which included Picasso, Proust, Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, Ravel and Debussy - would also incur its own 'revision' ... as time went on and The Rite of Spring altered the way we experience music and theatre, there weren't many willing to admit that they had failed to recognise the revolutionary moment as it happened. 

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