Stravinsky was Diaghilev's fourth choice for The Firebird, and it made him famous
The Ballets Russes first wanted Nikolai Tcherepnin to score its new Russian fairy-tale ballet, then approached others before turning to a young student of Rimsky-Korsakov. Igor Stravinsky wrote The Firebird in about six months, and its Paris premiere on 25 June 1910 turned him into an international name overnight.
Sergei Diaghilev had moved his ambitions to Paris after his Russian art magazine folded in 1904, and by 1909 he had enough backing to launch his own ballet company. Money was tight, and French audiences had developed a taste for things Russian, so he wanted a ballet steeped in Russian music and design. A committee led unofficially by the choreographer Michel Fokine, with Alexandre Benois and the painter Aleksandr Golovin, built a story from folk tale collections: Prince Ivan, the wicked immortal Koschei, a captive princess, and a magical bird that helps defeat him.
Diaghilev had heard Stravinsky's vivid Scherzo fantastique in Saint Petersburg in February 1909. After Tcherepnin withdrew and Anatoly Lyadov was sounded out, the commission went to Stravinsky, who started sketching before he even knew the full scenario. He later grumbled that it was descriptive music of a kind he did not want to write, yet he attended every rehearsal, playing difficult passages over and over for Tamara Karsavina, the first Firebird. Dancers still missed entrances, because the orchestra sounded nothing like the piano version.
Musically, the score separates the human and supernatural worlds with harmonic motifs, and it asks players for special effects such as bowing near the bridge, striking strings with the wood of the bow, and flutter-tonguing. Fokine's choreography was just as novel. Rather than another princess or swan, his Firebird was an abstract, rebellious force, danced with exaggerated classical steps and deep bends at the waist.
Paris loved it; one critic called it a marvel of equilibrium, and another hailed Stravinsky as heir to the Russian nationalist composers. At home the reaction was cooler, with listeners walking out of a Russian concert performance and a fellow student complaining that the dissonances grew tiresome. Diaghilev's bet paid off regardless, leading straight to Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky later drew three concert suites from the ballet, and the 1919 version is still the one most often played.
Source: The Firebird
