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Ida Rubinstein (Ukraine 1883- France 1960)
Ida was a Russian dancer, actress and patron of the arts, one of the greatest feminine icons of La Belle Epoque. Her extraordinarily seductive stage presence, bi-sexuality, exotic and mysterious beauty dazzled Paris in Diaghilev's first 2 seasons of the Ballets Russes: Cléopâtre (1909) and Shéhérazade (1910), and she became a legendary enchantress.
"Her long youthfully slender, peculiarly angular body seemed to have just descended from an Egyptian bas-relief, with her marvelous Eastern profile and narrow almond eyes." —Prince Peter Lieven
After the 1909-10 seasons, Ida left the Ballets Russes in 1911 to follow her own vision and ambition. A one-sided rivalry ensued with Diaghilev, who always struggled to find funds for his productions, whereas her inherited wealth made the breadth of her creative initiatives and productions possible for over two decades.
She was a close friend of Debussy, with whom she created the controversial Martyre de Saint-Sebastien (1911) on the play by Gabriele D'Annunzio.
Years later, Ida Rubinstein commissioned Ravel to compose the Boléro (1928), and became one of his most devoted friends at the end of his life. She also produced a ballet of Ravel's La Valse in 1928 and 1931, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, sister of the famous Vaslav Nijinsky. La Valse was originally a 1920 commission by Diaghilev who rejected it on the spot.
Throughout the 1920's, Rubinstein also commissioned ballet music from Les Six, including Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud, George Auric, Henri Sauguet as well as Stravinsky, while hiring Ballets Russes designers Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, and choreographers Nijinska, Mikhail Fokine, and George Balanchine. Léonide Massine even agreed to leave New York to choreograph for Ida.
Diaghilev became increasingly enraged by her recruiting initiatives and saw Ida as his worse nemesis, an unfortunate rivalry considering the prodigious success their collaboration brought to the birth of the Ballets Russes in 1909 and 1910.
Le Bolero by Maurice Ravel
Ravel was forced to complete BOLERO in record time, documentary. Commissioned by Ida Rubinstein in 1922, it was composed and premiered in 1928 by her ballet company at the Paris Opera, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and design and scenario by Alexander Benois, both from the Ballets Russes.
One of his last compositions - only Ravels' two Piano Concerti were composed after Bolero - which, much to Ravel's surprise became his most famous work. Ravel admitted that his Bolero was an "experiment" of using only one theme throughout. Its compelling effect is due to Ravel's extensive orchestration, allowing infinite sound colors and progressively thicker and louder volume, from a single line to a roaring climax by the full orchestra.
Ravel conducting, recorded in 1930, Orchestre Lamoureux, notice the slower tempo, and the distinct timbre of the instruments.
A beautiful rendition of BOLERO... Olympic medalists
La Valse by Maurice Ravel
Poème chorégraphique pour orchestre (1919-1920)
Diaghilev commissioned La Valse from Ravel, as a ballet for his 1920 season, but outright rejected it upon hearing the first reading by the composer at the piano, claiming: "Ravel, it's a masterpiece, but it's not a ballet. It's the portrait of a ballet, a painting of a ballet."
Several years later, Ida Rubinstein proved Diaghilev wrong and staged La Valse alongside Boléro at the Opéra de Paris in 1928.
"Drifting clouds part and allow hazy glimpses of waltzing couples. They gradually dissipate and we can distinguish (at letter A) an immense ballroom filled with a whirling crowd. The scene continues to clear. The glow of the chandeliers shines to a full splendor..."—Ravel, inscribed on the score.
“We are dancing on the edge of a volcano”—Ravel, notes on La Valse
“This dance may seem tragic, like any other emotion—voluptuousness, joy—pushed to the extreme. But one should only see what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage comes along to add light and movement.”—Ravel
"La Valse is a dancing, whirling, almost hallucinatory ecstasy, an increasingly passionate and exhausting whirlwind of dancers, who are overcome and exhilarated by nothing but ‘the waltz.’”—Ravel
1973 filming of the NYC Ballet in Berlin, Balanchine's choreography of 1951. La Valse starts at 16:00 (preceded by Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales). Balanchine's choreography embraces a more ominous mood of La Valse, portraying a ballerina seduced and destroyed by a dark male figure.
Two-piano transcription by Ravel (1921) is one of the most enthralling scores for piano, enrapturing, delirious, dizzyingly and wildly virtuosic. You may follow the score.
La Valse, live in concert: Nelson Freire and Martha Argerich.
"The most unexpected of Ravel's compositions, revealing to us heretofore unforeseen depths of Romanticism, power, and rapture."—Paul Landormy, Ravel's first biographer.
"If I were called upon [to formulate principles of my aesthetic] I would ask to be allowed to identify myself with the simple pronouncements made by Mozart on this subject. He confined himself to saying that there is nothing that music cannot undertake to do, or dare, or portray, provided it continues to charm and always remains music." —Ravel
Ravel dedicated La Valse to Misia Sert (1872-1950) an extremely prominent figure and patroness in the art world. Misia was a close friend and confidant of Sergei Diaghilev, who wielded immense influence on him with regards to bringing artists together, diffusing feuds and she was always involved in current and future productions.
Rubinstein and Nijinska printed on the program of the premiere of BOLERO (1928): "Inside a tavern in Spain, people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling. In response to the cheers to join in, the female dancer has leapt onto the long table and her steps become more and more animated."
First 2 pages of the manuscript facsimile of a 4-hand piano arrangement of Bolero, a magnificent example of Ravel's meticulous music notation. Notice the ongoing immutable rhythmic pattern in the lower piano part, repeated 169 times by one or more snare drums throughout the entire piece, in its orchestrated version.
Slide show of Ida Rubinstein photographs to the music of the Bolero
Orphaned at the age of 8, Ida Rubinstein inherited a vast fortune from one of Russia's richest families. She grew up in Saint-Petersburg, receiving the best education in music, art, theater, dance and literature. She was fluent in five languages and studied ancient Greek. She had one goal in life, which was to go to Paris, and be on stage. She was a protégé of dancer Mikhail Fokine and designer Léon Baskt, her mentors in Saint-Petersburg, who convinced Diaghilev to hire her for the first season of the Ballets Russes, in 1909. She was an immediate sensation.
"Before a spellbound audience, she was penetratingly beautiful, like the perfume of some exotic essence." —Jean Cocteau
Rubinstein in Shéhérazade, 1910 by Eugene Druet.
Her partner in the ballet was the great Vaslav Nijinsky. Shéhérazade was admired at the time for its racy sensuality and sumptuous staging.
Ida Rubinstein in the role of La Pisanella ou la mort parfumée by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Costume by Léon Bakst, choreography Mikhail Fokine. Portrait by Antonio de la Gandara (1913)
Rubinstein enjoyed great success as Cleopatra. When, at the central moment of the ballet, Cleopatra "gives herself up to the ecstasy of love" and discards her veils. "... to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, one by one, the covers were unwound, disclosing the divine body omnipotent in its beauty... When the slight figure emerged covered only by the wonderful transparent garment invented by Bakst, one experienced a feeling of awe. Here was not a pretty artiste in a déshabillé but a real, fatal enchantress, in the tradition of the cruel and grasping Astarte." —Alexandre Benois (Russian artist and designer for the Ballets Russes).
1910 Photograph by Eugène Druet (1868-1916)
By the 1920's, she had become a Grande Dame of the French theatre, producing the play Antoine et Cléopâtre in 1920, to be followed by other plays throughout the 1920's. In 1923, at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, she produced and starred in a lavish production of La Dame aux Camélias, a play associated with the "Divine Sarah," who had given Rubinstein her blessing as an actress. She achieved new respect as a dramatic actress. (Sarah Bernhardt had just died in 1923).
Costumes and set were by Ballets Russes designer Alexandre Benois - to Diaguilev's jealous wrath.
Costume drawings by Léon Bakst (1866-1924), who was deeply affected by Rubinstein's strange beauty and her androgynous slimness - "she is a goddess" he would shout - and would become her mentor before they both left Russia. Bakst was the principal set and costumes designer for the Ballet Russes from 1909 to 1922, and convinced Diaghilev to have Ida perform the role of Cleopatra for the 1909 opening Ballets Russes season in Paris. Bakst remained Ida's personal designer until his death in 1924, creating a one-sided rivalry with Diaghilev.
Léon Bakst also designed Ida Rubinstein's lavish new residence in Paris, where she lived from 1921 to 1940.
Rubinstein and Vaslav Nijinsky in Shéhérazade drawn by George Barbier (1882-1932), one of the greatest French fashion illustrator of the early 20th century. In the 1920's he worked with Erté to design sets and costumes for the Folies Bergères. George Barbier - Master of Art-Deco and George Barbier.
Rimsky-Korsakoff's Sheherazade recording: lush and romantic Russian music
Ida Rubinstein by George Barbier
Rubinstein and Nijinsky in Shéhérazade, based on the tales of One Thousand and One Nights.
Portrait by Jacques Emile Blanche of Ida Rubinstein as Sultana Zobeide in the ballet Shéhérazade, 1910.
From 1914 to 1920, Rubinstein turned the Carlton Hotel in Paris into a hospital for wounded Allied soldiers and took her responsibilities very seriously. She was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1934, followed by full French citizenship in 1935 and the Grand Croix de la Légion d'honneur in 1939, the highest honorific title awarded by the French government. She died in Vence (1960), a gorgeous perched medieval village above the Côte d'Azur, where she spent the last ten years of her life in relative seclusion.
Théâtre national de l'Opéra-Comique
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