It was quite an evening.

May 29, 1913 –
Imagine, if you will, you live in Paris and that after a hard day of not working and drinking heavily (it’s what most of the idle rich did in Paris at the time, in between bouts of sodomy, while they waited around for Marcel Proust to finish writing that damn book he was working on – but that’s another story), you were dragged to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Tonight, the Ballets Russes was going to perform a new ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) with the international star, Nijinsky, the choreographer. You might have been expecting a brief snooze but what you got was a full out boxing match (not unlike an evening at the Boston Pops).

The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd, and there were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance, and Igor Stravinsky (the composer) himself was so upset on account of its reception that he fled the theater in mid-scene, reportedly crying. Fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns famously stormed out of the première, (though Stravinsky latter said “I do not know who invented the story that he was present at, but soon walked out of, the premiere.“) allegedly infuriated over the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet’s opening bars.

I hate when they misuse the bassoon.

Stravinsky ran backstage, where Sergei Diaghliev, was turning the lights on and off in an attempt to try to calm the audience, much like some kind of proto-DJ. Nijinsky stood on a chair, leaned out (far enough that Stravinsky had to grab his coat-tail), and shouted numbers to the dancers, who couldn’t hear the orchestra (this was challenging because Russian numbers are polysyllabic above ten, such as eighteen: vosemnadsat). All of this could have been choreographed itself. It’s a marvel the show continued at all.

Although Nijinsky and Stravinsky were despondent, Diaghilev (the ballet’s impresario) commented that the scandal was “just what I wanted“. The music and choreography were considered barbaric and sexual and are also often noted as being the primary factors for the cause of the riot, but many political and social tensions surrounding the premiere contributed to the backlash as well.

The Rite of Spring eventually became a cornerstone of 20th-century music. It influenced generations of composers, filmmakers, and choreographers. What premiered as pandemonium now stands as a cultural revolution.