1910 ballet by Igor Stravinsky
The Firebird (; ) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Michel Fokine, who collaborated with Alexandre Benois and others on a scenario based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. It was first performed at the Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910 and was an immediate success, catapulting Stravinsky to international fame and leading to future Diaghilev–Stravinsky collaborations including "Petrushka" (1911) and "The Rite of Spring" (1913).
"The Firebird"'s mortal and supernatural elements are distinguished with a system of leitmotifs placed in the harmony dubbed "leit-harmony". Stravinsky intentionally used many specialist techniques in the orchestra, including "ponticello", "col legno", "flautando", "glissando", and flutter-tonguing. Set in the evil immortal Koschei's castle, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who battles Koschei with the help of the magical Firebird.
Stravinsky later created three concert suites based on the work: in 1911, ending with the "Infernal Dance"; in 1919, which remains the most popular today; and in 1945, featuring significant reorchestration and structural changes. Other choreographers have staged the work with Fokine's original choreography or created entirely new productions using the music, some with new settings or themes. Many recordings of the suites have been made; the first was released in 1928, using the 1911 suite. A film version of the popular Sadler's Wells Ballet production, which revived Fokine's original choreography, was produced in 1959.
History.
Background.
Igor Stravinsky began studying composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1902. He completed several works during his time as a student, including his first performed work, Pastorale (1907), and his first published work, the Symphony in E-flat (1907), which the composer categorized Opus 1. In February 1909, a performance of his "Scherzo fantastique" and "Feu d'artifice" in Saint Petersburg was attended by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who was intrigued by the vividness of Stravinsky's works.
Diaghilev founded the art magazine "Mir iskusstva" in 1898, but after it ended publication in 1904, he turned towards Paris for artistic opportunities rather than his native Russia. In 1907, Diaghilev presented a five-concert series of Russian music at the Paris Opera; the next year, he staged the Paris premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov's version of "Boris Godunov". By 1909, Diaghilev had connected with Michel Fokine, Léon Bakst, and Alexandre Benois, and gained enough money to start his independent ballet company, the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to orchestrate music by Chopin for the ballet "Les Sylphides", and the composer was finished by March 1909.
Fokine was a renowned dancer, receiving first prize in his class upon graduation from the Imperial Theatre School in 1898; he subsequently entered the Mariinsky Ballet as a soloist and was promoted to lead dancer of the company in 1904. Fokine was dissatisfied with the ballet tradition of glamorous appeals to the audience and interruptions from viewers; he felt that dramatic dance should be strictly displayed with no interruption of illusion, and that the music should be closely connected to the theme. His 1907 ballets "The Dying Swan" and "Les Sylphides" were very successful and established Fokine as a competitor to other prominent choreographers. In 1908, Benois, a member of Diaghilev's "Mir iskusstva" circle and friend of Fokine's, arranged for the dancer to prepare a repertoire for the Ballets Russes' 1909 season as the company's first lead choreographer; the season was very successful, and Diaghilev began organizing plans for the 1910 season soon after.
Conception.
As the Ballets Russes faced financial issues, Diaghilev wanted a new ballet with distinctly Russian music and design, something that had recently become popular with French and other Western audiences (likely due to the glamorous charm of The Five's music). Fokine unofficially led a committee of artists to devise the scenario of this new ballet, including himself, Benois, the composer Nikolai Tcherepnin, and the painter Aleksandr Golovin. Benois recalled that Pyotr Petrovich Potyomkin, a poet and ballet enthusiast in Diaghilev's circle, proposed the subject of the Firebird to the artists, citing the 1844 poem "A Winter's Journey" by Yakov Polonsky that includes the lines:
 ;poem ;
And in my dreams I see myself on a wolf's back
Riding along a forest path
To do battle with a sorcerer-tsar
In that land where a princess sits under lock and key,
Pining behind massive walls.
There gardens surround a palace all of glass;
There Firebirds sing by night
And peck at golden fruit.
 ;/poem ;
The committee drew from several books of Russian fairy tales, in particular Alexander Afanasyev's collection and Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov's "The Little Humpbacked Horse". The immortal king Koschei and the captive Princess were incorporated from a Muscovite anthology of stories, which also helped determine the Firebird's role in the story. Fokine drew on the stark contrast between good and evil in Russian fairy tales while developing the ballet's characters. The choreographer blended fantasy and reality to create the scenario, a trope of romanticism found in many of Fokine's folkish ballets. Originally, Tcherepnin was to compose the music, as he had previously worked on "Le Pavillon d'Armide" with Fokine and Benois, but he withdrew from the project. In September1909, Diaghilev asked Anatoly Lyadov to compose the ballet; Lyadov expressed interest in the production, but took too long to meet the 1910 season's deadline. After considering Alexander Glazunov and Nikolay Sokolov, Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to compose the score upon encouragement from Tcherepnin and Boris Asafyev.
Stravinsky began work in October or November1909, traveling to the Rimsky-Korsakov household with Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, the son of Stravinsky's teacher and dedicatee of "The Firebird"'s score. Because Stravinsky began work before Diaghilev officially commissioned him, the composer's sketches did not align with the scenario; the full story became known to him when he met with Fokine in December and received the ballet's planned structure. Fokine ensured the creation of the ballet was an equal effort between the producers and the composer, working closely with Stravinsky while developing the choreography. While the composer worked, Diaghilev organized private performances of the piano score for the press. The French critic Robert Brussel, a friend of Diaghilev's, wrote: "By the end of the first scene, I was conquered: by the last, I was lost in admiration. The manuscript on the music-rest, scored over with fine pencillings, revealed a masterpiece."
Development.
Despite later lamenting the "descriptive music of a kind I did not want to write", Stravinsky finished "The Firebird" in about six months, and had it fully orchestrated by mid-May 1910. Stravinsky arrived in Paris around the beginning of June to attend the premiere of his first stage work; it was his first visit to Paris.
Rehearsals began in Ekaterininsky Hall, and Stravinsky attended every rehearsal to help with the music, often explaining the complicated rhythms to the dancers. Tamara Karsavina, who originated the titular Firebird role, later recalled, "Often he came early to the theatre before a rehearsal began in order to play for me over and over again some particularly difficult passage." Stravinsky also worked closely with Gabriel Pierné, who conducted the premiere with the Colonne Orchestra, to "explain the music... [but the musicians] found it no less bewildering than did the dancers". Two dress rehearsals were held to accommodate the dancers, many of whom missed their entrances due to the unexpected changes in the music, "which sounded quite different when played by the orchestra from what it had sounded like when played on a piano".
When the company arrived in Paris, the ballet was not finished, causing Fokine to extend rehearsals; he petitioned Diaghilev to postpone the premiere, but the impresario declined, fearing public disappointment. The Ballets Russes season began on 4 June 1910 with stagings of Schumann's "Carnaval", Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade", and short productions from the previous season.
Fokine's style of dance made great use of interpretive movement; he used ideas of expressiveness, naturalism, vitality, and stylistic consistency. The choreographer employed many forms of dance in "The Firebird". The titular Firebird danced classically, Koschei and his subjects in a more violent and grotesque manner, and the Princesses in a looser, gentler way. The role of the Firebird differed from that of traditional ballerinas; female dancers often danced princesses, swans, and lovers, but the Firebird was a mysterious and abstract idea, represented as a magical force rather than a person. Her choreography featured exaggerated classical steps, with deep bending at the waist; Fokine wanted her to be "powerful, hard to manage, and rebellious" rather than graceful. This new kind of role for a female character was revolutionary for the ballet scene.
Premiere and reception.
Excitement for the premiere was great, particularly in Diaghilev's circle of "Mir iskusstva" collaborators. The sculptor Dmitri Stelletsky, who helped develop the scenario, wrote to Golovin on 16 June, "I'm staying till Sunday; I must see "The Firebird". I have seen your dazzling drawings and costumes. I like Stravinsky's music in the orchestra and the dances tremendously. I think the whole thing together with your sets will look spectacular. Serov has also put off his departure because of this ballet". Diaghilev remarked of Stravinsky during rehearsals, "Mark him well, he is a man on the eve of celebrity".
"The Firebird" premiered at the Palais Garnier on 25 June 1910, and was very well-received. The cast starred Karsavina as the Firebird, Fokine as Prince Ivan, Vera Fokina as the youngest princess, and Alexis Bulgakov as Koschei. Karsavina later told an interviewer, "With every performance, success went "crescendo"". Critics praised the ballet for the unity of the decor, choreography, and music. "The old-gold vermiculation of the fantastic back-cloth seems to have been invented to a formula identical with that of the shimmering web of the orchestra", wrote Henri Ghéon in "Nouvelle revue française"; he called the ballet "the most exquisite marvel of equilibrium" and added that Stravinsky was a "delicious musician". Fokine's choreography was seen as a triumph of his creative genius; the natural miming and many styles of dance displayed were popular with audiences.
Many critics praised Stravinsky's alignment with Russian nationalist music, one saying, "[Stravinsky is] the only one who has achieved more than mere attempts to promote Russia's true musical spirit and style". Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi hailed the young composer as the legitimate heir to The Mighty Handful. Russian audiences viewed the work less favorably, and the Russian premiere was not well-received; according to a reviewer in "Apollon", "Many deserted the Hall of Nobles during the performance of this suite." A fellow Rimsky-Korsakov pupil, Jāzeps Vītols, wrote that "Stravinsky, it seems, has forgotten the concept of pleasure in sound... [His] dissonances unfortunately quickly become wearying, because there are no ideas hidden behind them". Nikolai Myaskovsky reviewed the piano reduction of the full ballet in October 1911 and wrote, "What a wealth of invention, how much intelligence, temperament, talent, what a remarkable, what a rare piece of work this is".
Stravinsky recalled that after the premiere and subsequent performances, he met many figures in the Paris art scene, including Marcel Proust, Sarah Bernhardt, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Ravel, André Gide, and Princesse Edmond de Polignac. Claude Debussy was brought on stage after the premiere, and he invited Stravinsky to dinner, beginning a lifelong friendship between the two composers. According to Sergei Bertensson, Sergei Rachmaninoff said of the music: "Great God! What a work of genius this is! This is true Russia!" Debussy later said of Stravinsky's score, "What do you expect? One has to start somewhere." Richard Strauss told the composer in private that he had made a "mistake" in beginning the piece "pianissimo" instead of astonishing the public with a "sudden crash". Shortly after he summed up to the press his experience of hearing "The Firebird" for the first time by saying, "it's always interesting to hear one's imitators". Sergei Prokofiev, who first heard the piano reduction at a gathering, told Stravinsky, "there was no music in [the ballet's introduction] and if there was any, it was from "Sadko"".
In his 1962 autobiography, Stravinsky credited much of the production's success to Golovin's set and Diaghilev's collaborators; he wrote that Fokine's choreography "always seemed to me to be complicated and overburdened with plastic detail, so that the artists felt, and still feel now, great difficulty in co-ordinating their steps and gestures with the music". The ballet's success secured Stravinsky's position as Diaghilev's star composer, and there were immediate talks of a sequel, leading to the composition of