Missouri Classical Music News

In May 1913, the lobby of the Théâtre Champs-Elysées in Paris was also over-poweringly hot. Yet the city's most glittering figures - Picasso, Cocteau, Proust, Ravel and Debussy - still went to the theatre that night.

They wanted to witness the premiere of The Rite of Spring, written by Igor Stravinsky and choreographed by the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. The music assaulted their ears. Stravinsky had experimented with ferocious stamping rhythms and set them against each other so that they clashed unpredictably. The choreography shocked the first-night audience with its daring modernism, ripping up the rulebook of classical ballet with its heavy, savage movements. One of the dancers later commented, "With every leap we landed heavily enough to jar every organ in us." Most shocking of all was the subject matter of pagan rituals and the barbaric sacrifice of a young virgin.