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 )

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.

Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

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.

In 1899, Diaghilev became special assistant to Prince Sergei Mikhaylovich Volkonsky, who had recently taken over directorship of all Imperial theaters.

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.

Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev by Valentin Serov ( 1904 )

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.

simple: Sergei Diaghilev

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

* 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.

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 ).

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.

Other notable premieres were given in Prague in 1899, and in Paris in 1909, with a Sergei Diaghilev production featuring Feodor Chaliapin as Galitsky and Maria Kuznetsova as Yaroslavna.

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.

It was reintroduced to western Europe on the eve of the First World War by a Russian company: the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, who came to be influential around the world.

* French / Russian — Productions of the Ballets Russes, under the direction of Sergei Diaghilev:

Tailleferre wrote many of her most important works during the 1920s, including her 1st Piano Concerto, the Harp Concertino, the ballets Le marchand d ' oiseaux ( the most frequently performed ballet in the repertoire of the Ballets suédois during the 1920s ) and La nouvelle Cythère which was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the ill-fated 1929 season of the famous Ballets Russes, and Sous les ramparts d ' Athènes in collaboration with Paul Claudel, as well as several pioneering film scores, including B ' anda, in which she used African themes.

In 1919, Bax was one of four British composers to be commissioned to write orchestral music to serve as interludes at Sergei Diaghilev ’ s Ballets Russes in London.

Koussevitzky also commissioned many new pieces from prominent composers, including the Symphony No. 4 of Sergei Prokofiev and the Symphony of Psalms by Igor Stravinsky.

Rostropovich either commissioned or was the recipient of compositions by many composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Olivier Messiaen, Witold Lutosławski, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki, Leonard Bernstein, Alfred Schnittke, Aram Khachaturian, Ástor Piazzolla, Sofia Gubaidulina, Arthur Bliss and Lopes Graça.

The band were also commissioned to make a soundtrack for the 1999 documentary Out of the Present, which follows Sergei Krikalev's time on the space station Mir.

In 1936 Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned by Natalya Sats and the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow to write a new musical symphony for children.

Wittgenstein later commissioned works for the left hand from other composers including Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, Sergei Prokofiev, and Franz Schmidt ( the finale of Schmidt's A major Clarinet Quintet-the last of his Wittgenstein commissions-is a set of variations on a theme by Labor from Labor's own clarinet and piano quintet, his opus 11 published in 1901 ).

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.

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.

It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev.

In 1915 she started work on a series of designs — Six Winged Seraph, Angel, St. Andrew, St. Mark, Nativity, and others — for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev to be titled Liturgy.

* May 29 – The ballet The Rite of Spring, with music by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Pierre Monteux, choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and design by Nicholas Roerich, is premièred by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris ; its modernism provokes one of the most famous classical music riots in history.

In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

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.

She is widely regarded as one of the finest classical ballet dancers in history and was most noted as a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev.

However, two weeks later he made lewd jokes about a male ballet dancer to Sergei Diaghilev at the rehearsals of Les Biches.

Lambert was a prodigy, writing orchestral works from the age of 13, and at 20 received a commission to write a ballet for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes ( Romeo and Juliet ).

The orchestra was engaged to play for a Paris season given by Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company, the Ballets Russes, in 1910.

Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes brought fame to Vaslav Nijinsky and established modern ballet technique.

He would later write to his protégé, the composer Sergei Taneyev, " I listened to the Delibes ballet ' Sylvia '... what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony.

Notable adaptations for performance include a 1929 ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to music written by Sergei Prokofiev, a 1957 ballet by Hugo Alfvén, and an 1869 oratorio by Arthur Sullivan.