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 a pioneer in adapting these new musical styles to modern ballet.

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.

Stravinsky got the commission from Serge Diaghilev to write The Firebird ( 1910 ) in part because Diaghilev heard this piece of music, and was impressed with its orchestration.

Opponents of that interpretation point out that he did not attend the funeral ( he generally did not attend funerals ) and immediately left Paris with Diaghilev for a performance of Les noces ( The Wedding ) by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo.

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.

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.

Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev by Valentin Serov ( 1904 )

Portrait of Serge Diaghilev with His Nanny, by Léon Bakst ( 1906 ).

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.

The Ekstrom Collection of the Diaghilev and Stravinsky Foundation is held by the Department of Theatre and Performance of the Victoria and Albert Museum ..

* « Centenary of Ballets Russians of Diaghilev »-two postage stamps of Monaco, created by Georgy Shishkin ( Gueorgui Chichkine )

He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird ( 1910 ), Petrushka ( 1911 ) and The Rite of Spring ( 1913 ).

Stravinsky's first period ( which excludes some of his early minor works ) began with Feu d ' artifice ( Fireworks ) and included the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev.

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.

Ravel began work on the score in 1909 after a commission from Sergei Diaghilev.

In late 1928, with the aforementioned Soviet tour cancelled, Prokofiev decided to accept another ballet commission from Diaghilev.

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.

Diaghilev eventually transferred the commission to the 28-year-old Stravinsky.

* May 18 – Sergei Diaghilev, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust and Igor Stravinsky dine together in Paris, at the Majestic hotel, their only joint meeting.

Stravinsky blamed Diaghilev for his financial troubles, whom he accused of failing to live up to the terms of a contract they had signed.

Stravinsky was a young, virtually unknown composer when Diaghilev recruited him to create works for the Ballets Russes.

Like Stravinsky, Diaghilev had initially studied law, but had gravitated via journalism into the theatrical world.

On the other hand Stravinsky found Diaghilev an inspiration, " the very essence of a great personality ".

This ensured that the Diaghilev – Stravinsky collaboration would continue, in the first instance with Petrushka ( 1911 ) and then The Rite of Spring.

The illustrious orchestra revolted at the rehearsal for the first performance, refusing to play for Monteux ; only an intervention by Diaghilev restored the rehearsal, by the end of which Monteux was applauded and Stravinsky given an ovation.

Although his first reaction to the music was to tell Diaghilev, " I will never conduct music like that ", he worked with Stravinsky, giving practical advice to help the composer to achieve the orchestral balance and effects he sought.

His brother Alexandre Benois was a stage designer who worked with Stravinsky and Diaghilev.

Bodies were carried to the island on special funeral gondolas, including Igor Stravinsky, Joseph Brodsky, Jean Schlumberger, Frederick Rolfe, Horatio Brown, Sergei Diaghilev, Ezra Pound, Luigi Nono, Franco Basaglia, Zoran Mušič, and Salvador de Iturbide y Marzán.

Eventually, Diaghilev sought out the then-unknown Igor Stravinsky, who wrote the music.

When Fokine's ballet premiered in Paris as part of Diaghilev's " Saison Russe " in 1909, Diaghilev commissioned re-orchestrations of all the dances, except for the Glazunov-orchestrated Waltz, by Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Taneyev, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Igor Stravinsky.

From their earliest years, the children grew up in a home where their parents were in frequent communication with the other artists of the era, such as Vrubel, Kuinji, Stassov, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Block, Vl.

Stravinsky was a young, virtually unknown composer when Diaghilev recruited him to create works for the Ballets Russes.

Originally, Diaghilev approached the Russian composer Anatoly Lyadov, but later hired Stravinsky to compose the music.

The ballet has historic significance not only as Stravinsky's breakthrough piece — " Mark him well ", said Sergei Diaghilev to Tamara Karsavina, who was dancing the title role: " He is a man on the eve of celebrity ..." — but also as the beginning of the collaboration between Diaghilev and Stravinsky that would also produce Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.

Like Stravinsky, Diaghilev had initially studied law, but had gravitated via journalism into the theatrical world.