It was produced by Diaghilev, with sets by Picasso, the libretto by Apollinaire and the music by Erik Satie.

Prokofiev's first major success breaking out of the composer-pianist mould was with his purely orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes ; Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev – Chout, Le pas d ' acier and The Prodigal Son – which at the time of their original production were all highly successful.

Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet Chout ( The Fool, the original Russian-language full title was Сказка про шута, семерых шутов перешутившего ( Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivshavo ), meaning " The Tale of the Buffoon who Outwits Seven Other Buffoons ").

Around 1927, the virtuoso's situation brightened ; he had exciting commissions from Diaghilev and made concert tours in Russia ; in addition, he enjoyed a very successful staging of The Love for Three Oranges in Leningrad ( as Saint Petersburg was then known ).

During 1928 – 29 Prokofiev composed what was to be the last ballet for Diaghilev, The Prodigal Son, which was staged on 21 May 1929 in Paris with Serge Lifar in the title role.

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (;, Sergei Pavlovich Dyagilev, ; 19 August 1929 ), usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.

Sergei Diaghilev was born to a wealthy and cultured family in Selischi ( Novgorod Governorate ), Russia ; his father, Pavel Pavlovich, was a cavalry colonel, but the family's money came mainly from vodka distilleries.

Although not instantly received into the group, Diaghilev was aided by Benois in developing his knowledge of Russian and Western art.

Diaghilev was soon responsible for the production of the Annual of the Imperial Theaters in 1900, and promptly offered assignments to his close friends: Léon Bakst would design costumes for the French play Le Coeur de la Marquise, while Benois was given the opportunity to produce Sergei Taneyev's opera Cupid's Revenge.

After several increasingly antagonistic differences of opinion, Diaghilev in his demonstrative manner refused to go on editing the " Annual of the Imperial Theatres " and was discharged by Volkonsky in 1901 and left disgraced in the eyes of the nobility.

Diaghilev heard Stravinsky's early orchestral works Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed enough to ask Stravinsky to arrange some pieces by Chopin for the Ballets Russes.

Diaghilev staged Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty in London in 1921 ; it was a production of remarkable magnificence both in settings and costumes but, despite being well received by the public, it was a financial disaster for Diaghilev and Oswald Stoll, the theatre-owner who had backed it.

Diaghilev was known as a hard, demanding, even frightening taskmaster.

Alicia Markova was very young when she joined the Ballet Russes and would later say that she had called Diaghilev " Sergypops " and he'd said he would take care of her like a daughter.

Throughout his life, Diaghilev was severely afraid of dying in water, and avoided traveling by boat.

In February 1909, two orchestral works, the and ( Fireworks ) were performed at a concert in Saint Petersburg, where they were heard by Sergei Diaghilev, who was at that time involved in planning to present Russian opera and ballet in Paris.

Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed by Fireworks to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations and then to compose a full-length ballet score, The Firebird.

To present these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

To present these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

During these years, his work with the Ballets Russes, founded by Diaghilev, was groundbreaking.

The importance of rehearsal to Monteux was shown earlier when Diaghilev asked him to conduct Stravinsky's new Les Noces with no rehearsal, as the composer would already have conducted the first performance, Monteux following on from there.

In 1909 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Lyadov to orchestrate a number for the Chopin-based ballet Les Sylphides, and on 4 September that year wrote to the composer asking for a new ballet score for the 1910 season of his Ballets Russes ; however, despite the much-repeated story that Lyadov was slow to start composing the work which eventually became The Firebird ( famously fulfilled by the then relatively inexperienced Igor Stravinsky ), there is no evidence that Lyadov ever accepted the commission.

At the age of 13, Markova was observed in class by Diaghilev, who was visiting London in search of new talent for his ballet company.

In her other well-known photographic series from the 1970s and 1980s such as The King of Solana Beach ( 1972 – 75 ), The Angel of Mercy ( 1976 – 78 ), and Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev ( 1974 – 89 ), Antin inhabits various fictional personas to comment on how history is often retold, reinterpreted and redefined as a result of new discoveries, subjective perceptions and memory.

Sergei Diaghilev tolerated Grabar as a business asset but feared and distrusted him as a potential new leader of the movement ; Grabar ' financial backing provided by Shcherbatov seemed especially menacing.

A turning point for Nijinsky was his meeting Sergei Diaghilev, a celebrated and highly innovative producer of ballet and opera as well as art exhibitions, who concentrated on promoting Russian visual and musical art abroad, particularly in Paris.

Significant modern impresarios in the traditional sense include Thomas Beecham, Rudolf Bing, Sergei Diaghilev, Richard D ' Oyly Carte, Fortune Gallo, Sol Hurok, Aaron Richmond, and jazz festival producer George Wein.

As a designer for the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev, Benois ' influence on the modern ballet and stage design is considered seminal.

Russian choreographer Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet, which resulted in Parade, in 1917.

In 1924, he designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes.

In 1913 — the year of Edmund Husserl's Ideas, Niels Bohr's quantized atom, Ezra Pound's founding of imagism, the Armory Show in New York, and, in Saint Petersburg, the " first futurist opera ," Victory Over the Sun — another Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, working in Paris for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed The Rite of Spring for a ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, that depicted human sacrifice.

* 1872 – Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario, founder of the Ballets Russes ( d. 1929 )

Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, Ala and Lolli, but rejected the work in progress when Prokofiev brought it to him in Italy in 1915.

Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev ; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario.

However the Symphony appeared to prompt Diaghilev to commission Le pas d ' acier ( The Steel Step ), a ' modernist ' ballet score intended to portray the industrialisation of the Soviet Union.

In 1900 – 1901 Volkonsky entrusted Diaghilev with the staging of Léo Delibes ' ballet Sylvia, a favorite of Benois.

Diaghilev commissioned ballet music from composers such as Nikolai Tcherepnin ( Narcisse et Echo, 1911 ), Claude Debussy ( Jeux, 1913 ), Maurice Ravel ( Daphnis et Chloé, 1912 ), Erik Satie ( Parade, 1917 ), Manuel de Falla ( El Sombrero de Tres Picos, 1917 ), Richard Strauss ( Josephslegende, 1914 ), Sergei Prokofiev ( Ala and Lolly, rejected by Diaghilev and turned into the Scythian Suite ; Chout, 1915 revised 1920 ; Le pas d ' acier, 1926 ; and The Prodigal Son, 1929 ), Ottorino Respighi ( La Boutique fantasque, 1918 ), Francis Poulenc ( Les biches, 1923 ) and others.

Diaghilev also worked with dancer and ballet master Léonide Massine.

Diaghilev insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping Princess.

* August 19 – Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario ( b. 1872 )

Ravel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.