A very tragic obsession
The first night of the Ballets Russes’s production of Le Sacre Du Printemps has gone down in history as one of the great moments of cultural history. So astonishing was the presentation of the ballet that a riot broke out among the overwhelmed audience.
Usually, attention is focused on its creators: the brilliantly iconoclastic composer Igor Stravinsky; Nicholas Roerich, an artist and anthropologist who created the sets and costumes; the legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky; and his lover and patron, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who, with ballets that were as glorious when they failed as when they succeeded, dominated European cultural life for two decades.
But also present at the Théâtre des Champs- Elysées on the night of 29 May 1913, was a starstruck young girl who couldn’t have cared less what was happening on stage or the fisticuffs breaking out among the audience – she only had eyes for her idol, Nijinsky.
Romola de Pulszky was the daughter of a legendary Hungarian actress. In Budapest a year earlier, at the age of 19 (later she would say she had been only 16; she never stuck to the truth when something else sounded more romantic), she had attended a performance of the Ballets Russes.
Sitting beside the mother of her fiancé, a Hungarian baron, the impressionable Romola had been enraptured by the colour, the beauty and the passion on stage in front of her and she set her heart on discovering all she could about the Ballets and its star, Vaslav Nijinsky.
In the intervening year she broke off her engagement and, using her mother’s theatrical connections, began studying dance under the Ballets Russes’s maître de ballet, Enrico Cecchetti. Pretending that she was in love with one of the other dancers, she had also persuaded Diaghilev to allow her to follow the Ballets with a view, once she had trained, to joining the corps.
While they were preparing for the upcoming season in Monte Carlo, she lay outside on a bench beneath a blossoming magnolia tree while Nijinsky dined with Diaghilev and some friends on a terrace, watching them for hours; she begged for titbits of information from hotel maids and dressers at the theatres in which Nijinsky danced. On the night of Sacre’s premiere, Romola had attached herself to one of the most important backers of Ballets Russes, Baron de Günzberg, and saw everything from the wings, watching out for Nijinsky’s pale, tense face in the crowd. When their Paris season ended in June 1913, the company set off for London. Anna, Romola’s maid, had managed to get tickets on the same train as Nijinsky and he spoke to her for the first time on that journey. But her big moment came a few weeks later when Diaghilev decided not to accompany the Ballets to South America on a summer tour.
Frustrated by the lacklustre reception Sacre had received, when he had desperately needed a commercial success to pay off the company’s debts and fund its future, and furious with Nijinsky, who was increasingly railing against their relationship, Diaghilev had decided to holiday alone in Venice, leaving his petulant lover to his own devices for a few months.
Romola was delighted to find, when she embarked, that Diaghilev was not on board. ‘Twenty-one days of ocean and sky – no Diaghilev!’ she exulted. ‘He can’t escape!’ And she was right. The day before they sailed into the harbour at Rio de Janeiro, using Baron de Günzberg as proxy because they spoke no language in common, Nijinsky asked Romola to marry him. They were married a week later in Buenos Aires.
Diaghilev, in Venice when he heard the news, was devastated. He immediately asked his manager to inform Nijinsky that he was sacked, and went on a debauched tour of southern Italy before returning to Russia and scouring the theatres to find a replacement for Nijinsky, both on stage and in his bed.
‘I was petrified,’ wrote Romola of the moment she and Nijinsky received the telegram informing them that Nijinsky was no longer a dancer with the Ballets Russes. ‘This was Diaghilev’s revenge. Now, for the first time, it dawned on me that perhaps I had made a mistake; I had destroyed, where I wanted to be helpful.’
This moment of insight was, if anything, an understatement. The gorgeous figure glowing in the spotlights with whom Romola had fallen in love and pursued so wholeheartedly, would never again recapture his youthful glory. Over the coming years, destroyed by the collapse of his working relationship with Diaghilev, by the wreckage of the war and revolution that would tear his country and Europe apart, and by his own inability to inhabit the real, off-stage world, Nijinsky would lose his grip on sanity. In 1919 he suffered a breakdown and would spend the next 30 years of his life in and out of institutions.
Romola suffered alongside him, her own dreams of a glittering life as the wife of a ballet legend shattered. She was by turns protective of Nijinsky and negligent of him, at once working furiously to fund his care and using his myth to promote her own celebrity. Against all the odds, when she died in 1978, 28 years after her husband, she had kept his name – and her own – alive.
Nijinsky: A Life by Lucy Moore (Pro le Books, £25).
The child of itinerant dancers who toured provincial Russia’s theatres and circuses, he entered the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg at the age of nine. Even before he graduated his talents were recognised and he began his career as a coryphée rather than a member of the corps de ballet.
Very quickly the prima ballerina assoluta of the day, Mathilde Kshesinskaya, former mistress of the tsar, chose him as her partner and he was also paired with Anna Pavlova. In 1909, at a time when ballet was seen as a dead art and male dancers barely existed, he joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on their first season in Paris and was immediately acclaimed the dieu de la danse. Nurtured and protected by Diaghilev, he continued to dazzle audiences until their separation in 1913.
Usually, attention is focused on its creators: the brilliantly iconoclastic composer Igor Stravinsky; Nicholas Roerich, an artist and anthropologist who created the sets and costumes; the legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky; and his lover and patron, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who, with ballets that were as glorious when they failed as when they succeeded, dominated European cultural life for two decades.
But also present at the Théâtre des Champs- Elysées on the night of 29 May 1913, was a starstruck young girl who couldn’t have cared less what was happening on stage or the fisticuffs breaking out among the audience – she only had eyes for her idol, Nijinsky.
Romola de Pulszky was the daughter of a legendary Hungarian actress. In Budapest a year earlier, at the age of 19 (later she would say she had been only 16; she never stuck to the truth when something else sounded more romantic), she had attended a performance of the Ballets Russes.
Sitting beside the mother of her fiancé, a Hungarian baron, the impressionable Romola had been enraptured by the colour, the beauty and the passion on stage in front of her and she set her heart on discovering all she could about the Ballets and its star, Vaslav Nijinsky.
In the intervening year she broke off her engagement and, using her mother’s theatrical connections, began studying dance under the Ballets Russes’s maître de ballet, Enrico Cecchetti. Pretending that she was in love with one of the other dancers, she had also persuaded Diaghilev to allow her to follow the Ballets with a view, once she had trained, to joining the corps.
While they were preparing for the upcoming season in Monte Carlo, she lay outside on a bench beneath a blossoming magnolia tree while Nijinsky dined with Diaghilev and some friends on a terrace, watching them for hours; she begged for titbits of information from hotel maids and dressers at the theatres in which Nijinsky danced. On the night of Sacre’s premiere, Romola had attached herself to one of the most important backers of Ballets Russes, Baron de Günzberg, and saw everything from the wings, watching out for Nijinsky’s pale, tense face in the crowd. When their Paris season ended in June 1913, the company set off for London. Anna, Romola’s maid, had managed to get tickets on the same train as Nijinsky and he spoke to her for the first time on that journey. But her big moment came a few weeks later when Diaghilev decided not to accompany the Ballets to South America on a summer tour.
Frustrated by the lacklustre reception Sacre had received, when he had desperately needed a commercial success to pay off the company’s debts and fund its future, and furious with Nijinsky, who was increasingly railing against their relationship, Diaghilev had decided to holiday alone in Venice, leaving his petulant lover to his own devices for a few months.
Romola was delighted to find, when she embarked, that Diaghilev was not on board. ‘Twenty-one days of ocean and sky – no Diaghilev!’ she exulted. ‘He can’t escape!’ And she was right. The day before they sailed into the harbour at Rio de Janeiro, using Baron de Günzberg as proxy because they spoke no language in common, Nijinsky asked Romola to marry him. They were married a week later in Buenos Aires.
Diaghilev, in Venice when he heard the news, was devastated. He immediately asked his manager to inform Nijinsky that he was sacked, and went on a debauched tour of southern Italy before returning to Russia and scouring the theatres to find a replacement for Nijinsky, both on stage and in his bed.
‘I was petrified,’ wrote Romola of the moment she and Nijinsky received the telegram informing them that Nijinsky was no longer a dancer with the Ballets Russes. ‘This was Diaghilev’s revenge. Now, for the first time, it dawned on me that perhaps I had made a mistake; I had destroyed, where I wanted to be helpful.’
This moment of insight was, if anything, an understatement. The gorgeous figure glowing in the spotlights with whom Romola had fallen in love and pursued so wholeheartedly, would never again recapture his youthful glory. Over the coming years, destroyed by the collapse of his working relationship with Diaghilev, by the wreckage of the war and revolution that would tear his country and Europe apart, and by his own inability to inhabit the real, off-stage world, Nijinsky would lose his grip on sanity. In 1919 he suffered a breakdown and would spend the next 30 years of his life in and out of institutions.
Romola suffered alongside him, her own dreams of a glittering life as the wife of a ballet legend shattered. She was by turns protective of Nijinsky and negligent of him, at once working furiously to fund his care and using his myth to promote her own celebrity. Against all the odds, when she died in 1978, 28 years after her husband, she had kept his name – and her own – alive.
Nijinsky: A Life by Lucy Moore (Pro le Books, £25).
NIJINSKY: The greatest-ever dancer?
Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950) was one of the greatest 20th-century ballet dancers and, despite creating only three ballets (L’Après-midi D’un Faune, Jeux, and Le Sacre Du Printemps), a hugely influential choreographer.The child of itinerant dancers who toured provincial Russia’s theatres and circuses, he entered the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg at the age of nine. Even before he graduated his talents were recognised and he began his career as a coryphée rather than a member of the corps de ballet.
Very quickly the prima ballerina assoluta of the day, Mathilde Kshesinskaya, former mistress of the tsar, chose him as her partner and he was also paired with Anna Pavlova. In 1909, at a time when ballet was seen as a dead art and male dancers barely existed, he joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on their first season in Paris and was immediately acclaimed the dieu de la danse. Nurtured and protected by Diaghilev, he continued to dazzle audiences until their separation in 1913.