The Premiere The premiere performance of The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) took place on Thursday, May 29, 1913 at Paris’s newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The program that night also included Les Sylphides, Le Spectre de la Rose and Polovtsian Dances.
A Modernist Affair Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was designed by architect Auguste Perret in the Art Deco style, a building that soon became an architectural landmark for its early use of reinforced concrete. Commissioned by journalist and impresario Gabriel Astruc, the new theatre was conceived as a place for contemporary music, opera and dance. The majority of the audience who attended that night would have been much more accustomed to the elegance of traditional music and ballet, and might have felt as though it was being mocked by the startling modern performance of The Rite of Spring.
More on the history of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on its official website: http://www.theatrechampselysees.fr/le-theatre/un-peu-d-histoire (French only).
Riot The performance began at 8:45 p.m., and opposition to Stravinsky’s score soon erupted. There are numerous varying accounts and conflicting eyewitness reports of the audience’s riot — or near-riot — at the premiere performance. Most agree that that it likely began during the Introduction, and grew once the curtain rose on the dancers on stage. Many have speculated on its root cause. Both the music and the choreography may to some degree share equal responsibility, but these can’t shoulder complete blame for the “scandal,” given the broader cultural and political realities of 1913 Europe.
A New York Times article from June 8, 1913 details the audience’s reaction to the performance: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/17/arts/dance/rite-of-spring-1913.html?_r=0 (English only).
An Enduring Influence Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which he himself described as a “musical choreographic work,” is one of the most influential pieces of music of the twentieth century. Its world premiere performance in 1913 is said to have signaled the birth of Modernism.
Listen to The Rite of Spring, as played by the San Francisco Symphony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf0e_n49dcQ (Part 1 of 4).
Cruel Music As Tom Service wrote in The Guardian on Stravinsky’s score: “After the strangest, highest and most terrifyingly exposed bassoon solo ever to open an orchestral work, the music becomes a sinewy braid of teeming, complex woodwind lines... The dagger-like dissonance and jerky, jolting rhythms” are at once rooted in musical traditions of the 19th century and in folk tunes. “This is music that manages to sound both mechanistic and elemental, making The Rite as radical in 2013 as it was 100 years ago. A good performance will merely pulverize you. But a great one will make you feel that it’s you — that it’s all of us — being sacrificed by Stravinsky’s spellbinding and savagely cruel music.”
Read Service’s full article about the facts and myths of The Rite’s storied history: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/12/rite-of-spring-stravinsky (English only).
A Violent Spring Of his shattering score, The Guardian’s Judith Mackrell also writes: “Stravinsky’s score might have been based on the music of folkloric tradition, but it twisted and compressed its sources into searing shapes and sounds. Rhythms splintered and collided, harmonies clashed, instruments played in pulsing, shrieking registers. If this was an evocation of spring, it was no gentle pastoral, but a season of cracking ice, violent wind and burning sun.”
Read Judith Mackrell’s interviews with contemporary choreographers about their relationship with The Rite of Spring: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/apr/03/rite-of-spring-sadlers-wells (English only).
A Visceral Reaction The 36-minute work with over 40 roles, whose cast of dancers claimed to loathe performing in it, incited such cries from the audience that Stravinsky left the auditorium in anger and spent much of the performance in the wings. Referring to Nijinsky’s Dance of the Adolescents section, the music’s first moment of 'crushing dissonance,’ Stravinsky told his biographer that, “when the curtain opened on the group of knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down, the storm broke.”
