Diaghilev & Friends

By Joy Melville

In the first years of the last century Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) stormed Paris with an operatic production that sounded the trumpets of the coming Russian artistic avant garde. The following year he created the magical and now legendary Ballets Russes.

In Paris and London he drew together an amazingly talented group of like-minded people. Artists of the calibre of Picasso, Bakst and Fokine, dancers like Nijinski, Lifar and Markova, the composers Igor Stravinski and Sergei Prokovief. Bloomsbury Group, the Sitwells, John Gilegud and H G Wells were all captivated by the force of his personality.

Joy Melville looks at Diaghilev's work from its imperial Russian beginnings to the aftermath of the First World War, when the Russia and Europe that he had known were shattered. The legendary and tumultuous affair with his protégé Nijinski, his friendship with Jean Cocteau and his circle up until Serge Lifar's heartbroken leap into Diaghilev's grave.

The world of homosexuality in 19th century Russia is investigated, (it was known as 'Gentleman's Mischief'), and the excesses of life in Paris in the 1920s ('if cocaine doesn't get you, absinthe will'). Diaghilev lived life by his own rules: he ignored doctors' advice when the diabetes that would end his life was diagnosed (when told to spend more time in the open air, he merely ordered dinner in the Bois de Boulogne). Joy Melville brings to life a brief and daring age of sophisticated pleasures set against the background of a swiftly changing world.

 Joy Melville is the author of several biographies including Ellen Terry (Haus 2006), Ellen and Edy - the life of Ellen Terry and her daughter Edith Craig, Mother of Oscar - the life of Jane Francesca Wilde and Julia Margaret Cameron - Pioneer Photographer. 

Read The Times Online article on Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes HERE