Did “The Rite of Spring” Really Incite a Riot?

The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra will perform Igor Stravinsky’s modernist masterpiece The Rite of Spring on Saturday, April 12 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. In anticipation of the concert, we thought we’d try to dispel some myths surrounding Stravinsky’s most famous work.

It is an oft-repeated story that Stravinsky’s ballet Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) incited a riot when Sergey Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes premiered the work at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 29, 1913. It would not be entirely outside the realm of possibility, given Stravinsky’s unprecedentedly violent musical score, Nicholas Roerich’s brutal scenario, and Vaslav Nijinsky’s shocking choreography. While the piece did cause a stir, there is no evidence that any physical altercations between audience members took place or that the police were called. Nevertheless, the story stuck, and it has become a myth in classical music akin to the Catholic church “banning” the interval of the tritone or Salieri poisoning Mozart (neither of which are true, by the way).

The hundreds of accounts from audience members, newspapers, and the creatives involved in the premiere production of The Rite of Spring are often contradictory or unreliable, shrouding the actual events in mystery. The earliest reports do not mention any fisticuffs; instead, they note that the dancers took five curtain calls after The Rite of Spring before continuing the program with another ballet, Carl Maria von Weber’s Le Spectre de la Rose. It seems unlikely that the performance would proceed had a full-blown riot occurred. In fact, the word “riot” was only used to describe that night beginning in the 1920s, deployed as a marketing tactic to attract American audiences to performances of the work. Ever since, the myth of the premiere has distorted the actual story into a version we want to believe: that art can prompt a visceral reaction.

What most likely occurred was more akin to a contentious debate than a riot—impassioned and loud but not violent. Two days after the premiere, Gaston de Pawlowski wrote in Comœdia that the disruptions were so noisy that it was difficult to assess the work: “It was only by cupping our ears in the middle of an indescribable racket that we could painfully grasp an approximate idea of this new work, which was drowned out equally by its defenders and its adversaries.” Incriminating both the wealthy patrons and those in the cheap seats, he opined, “Where on earth were these bastards brought up?”

Much about the ballet was divisive. Stravinsky’s score was unprecedentedly loud, abrasive, and rhythmically complex. Given the score’s complexity and originality, it took over 130 dance calls and 17 orchestra rehearsals to get it right—an unusually high number, even for a new work. When Stravinsky first played the piano reduction for Pierre Monteux, who would conduct the premiere, Monteux recalled, “I was convinced he was raving mad. Heard this way, without the color of the orchestra . . . the crudity of the rhythm was emphasized, its stark primitiveness underlined.”

The ballet’s violent scenario was equally shocking. Devised by painter, writer, and archaeologist Nicholas Roerich, who also designed the set and costumes, the scenario told of an imagined ancient ritual sacrifice of a young girl to the god of spring. Nijinsky’s unorthodox choreography also fanned the audience’s indignation. Nijinsky instructed the dancers to do the opposite of their classical training, with feet turned in and flat, knees bent, and arms in inelegant positions. Instead of balletic lightness, the result was “ugly earthbound lurching and stomping,” according to musicologist Richard Taruskin. The choreography broke other Russian ballet conventions, forgoing crowd-pleasing solos and duets for large ensemble scenes, with the dancers often clumped together and rarely moving in unison.

The radicalness of The Rite of Spring was not entirely a surprise. The press coverage leading up to the premiere had primed audiences for a scandal. Newspapers ran announcements claiming the work would be “the most amazing creation ever attempted by M. Serge de Diaghilev’s admirable company” and “truly a new sensation which will undoubtedly provoke heated discussions, but will leave every spectator with an unforgettable memory of the artists.”

In addition to helping craft this promotional language, Diaghilev, an astute publicist and businessman, invited a select group of writers, musicians, and critics to a few open rehearsals. Conductor Louis Vuillemin was among them. He wrote in Comœdia how those invited to the rehearsals exited the theater either wholly convinced by the work or totally aghast, voicing their opinions loudly to whoever would listen. Supporters thought they were witnessing “the great musical revolution,” whereas skeptics thought they were being taken for a ride. Their opinions “spread through the entire public like wildfire thirty-six hours before the curtain rose,” Vuillemin wrote.

All these elements combined to create a veritable tinderbox in the theater, ignited by a heatwave that had struck Paris. Soon after the ballet began, a maelstrom of jeers, whistles, hisses, commentary, and even laughter rang out. Some audience members countered with shouts of support or calls for order. Attendees began hurling insults at one another, more appalled at each other’s behavior than anything on stage. The din became so loud the dancers could no longer hear the music. Nijinsky reportedly started yelling numbers at the dancers while standing on a chair in the wings. Diaghilev attempted to bring about order by flipping the house lights on and off, but his efforts were in vain. Stravinsky rushed backstage, not escaping out a window and wandering the streets of Paris in despair, as some stories claimed.

Class differences also likely fanned the flames. The audience ran the gamut from old-money aristocrats and new-money industrialists to intellectuals, students, and aesthetes. The design of the newly constructed Théâtre des Champs-Élysées intensified these class differences. Intended to be more egalitarian than in the city’s older, more traditional theaters, the theater had less physical separation between the expensive and cheap seats, making communication between them easier.

One audience member was the celebrated writer and film director Jean Cocteau, who observed, “All the elements of a scandal were present. The smart audience in tails and tulle, diamonds and ospreys was interspersed with the suits and bandeaux of the aesthetic crowd. The latter would applaud novelty simply to show their contempt for the people in the boxes. Innumerable shades of snobbery, super-snobbery and inverted snobbery were represented.”

Whatever occurred that fateful night, the scandal surrounding the premiere of The Rite of Spring helped cement the work as an icon of modernism and Stravinsky as its bastion. The timing of the work also contributed to its legendary status. Premiering in 1913—on the brink of the First World War and the ensuing chaos and paradigm shift—The Rite of Spring appeared at a turning point not only in geopolitics but also in art, literature, and music. As Gillian Moore writes in her book The Rite of Spring: The Music of Modernity, “With hindsight, it’s hard not to read into the rapid machine-gun fire of the trumpets and the crashes and explosions in the percussion a vision of the coming man-made hell of the Great War.” Of course, Stravinsky could not have anticipated the horrors to come, but his ballet reflects the changing times. The tendrils of the work’s influence would be far-reaching. Stravinsky’s novel treatment of rhythm, orchestration, and harmony in the score soon began to infiltrate subsequent music, making other innovations and musical movements of the 20th century possible.

Want to hear what all the fuss was about in 1913? Don’t miss the Champaign-Urbana Symphony’s concert on Saturday, April 12. Alongside The Rite of Spring, the program will feature a lively overture by Glinka. Plus, the CUSO will welcome the talented young musicians of the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra for a side-by-side performance of Mussorgsky’s thrilling orchestral poem Night on the Bare Mountain.