Diaghilev's Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World

Rupert Christiansen

Jan 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Rich Miller

About this audiobook

Serge Diaghilev, the Russian impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, is often said to have invented modern ballet. An art critic and connoisseur, Diaghilev had no training in dance or choreography, but he had a dream of bringing Russian art, music, design, and expression to the West and a mission to drive a cultural and artistic revolution. Bringing together such legendary talents as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, this complex and visionary genius created a new form of ballet defined by artistic integrity, creative freedom, and an all-encompassing experience of art, movement, and music. The Ballets Russes's explosive color combinations, sensual and androgynous choreography, and experimental sound was called "barbaric" by the Parisian press, but its radical style usurped the entrenched mores of traditional ballet. Diaghilev's Empire, the publication of which marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Diaghilev's birth, is an impeccably researched and daring reassessment of the phenomenon of the Ballets Russes and the Russian Revolution in twentieth-century art and culture. Rupert Christiansen, the dance critic for the Spectator, explores the fiery conflicts, outsize personalities, and extraordinary artistic innovations that make up this story of triumph and disaster.

About the author

Rupert Christiansen is the dance critic for the Spectator. He was also dance critic for the Mail on Sunday from 1995 to 2020 and has written on dance-focused subjects for many publications in the UK and the United States, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's & Queen, the Observer, and the Literary Review.

Rich Miller has performed onstage in everything from Shakespeare to Damn Yankees to August: Osage County. He also starred in the indie feature Ocatilla Flat.