A01=Stephen D. Press
A01=StephenD. Press
asafyev
Author_Stephen D. Press
Author_StephenD. Press
Ballet Score
Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes history
Ballets Russes Season
boris
Category=ATQL
Category=AVN
Category=AVP
Chicago Opera
choreographic analysis
Diaghilev's Circle
Diaghilev's Company
Diaghilev’s Circle
Diaghilev’s Company
early twentieth-century ballet research
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fils Prodigue
La Revue Musicale
Le Coq
Le Pas
Le Train Bleu
Les Danseurs
Les Noces
Magic Whip
music
musicale
Opening Number
Paris Season
pas
Piano Concerto
Polovtsian Dances
Prokofiev Ballet
Prokofiev's Music
prokofievs
Prokofiev’s Music
revue
russes
Russian modernism
scenic design collaboration
scythian
Scythian Suite
Soviet cultural studies
St Petersburg Conservatory
Stone Flower
Stravinsky's Early Ballets
Stravinsky’s Early Ballets
suite
twentieth-century musicology
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9780754604020
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 17 Jan 2006
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Ballet impresario Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev and composer Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev are eminent figures in twentieth-century cultural history, yet this is the first detailed account of their fifteen-year collaboration. The beginning was not trouble-free, but despite two false starts (Ala i Lolli and the first version of its successor, Chout) Diaghilev maintained his confidence in the composer. With his guidance and encouragement Prokofiev established his mature balletic style. After some years of estrangement during which Prokofiev wrote for choreographer Boris Romanov and conductor/publisher Serge Koussevitsky, Diaghilev came to the composer's rescue at a low point in his Western career. The impresario encouraged Prokofiev's turn towards 'a new simplicity' and offered him a great opportunity for career renewal with a topical ballet on Soviet life (Le Pas d'acier). Even as late as 1928-29 Diaghilev compelled Prokofiev to achieve new heights of expressivity in his characterizations (L'Enfant prodigue). Although Western scholars have investigated Prokofiev's operas, piano works, and symphonies, little attention has been paid to his early ballets written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Despite Prokofiev's devotion to opera, it was his ballets for Diaghilev as much as his concertos and solo piano works that earned his renown in Western Europe in the 1920s. Stephen D. Press discusses the genesis of each ballet, including the important contributions of the scenic designers (Mikhail Larionov, Georgy Yakulov and Georges Rouault) and the choreographer/dancers (Léonid Massine, Serge Lifar and George Balanchine), and the special relationship between the ballets' progenitors.
Stephen D. Press received a PhD in Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music History at Illinois Wesleyan University.
