Ballets Russes Autograph Manuscripts on Show at New Morgan Exhibition
Library of Congress/Morgan Library
Vaslav Nijinsky, The Afternoon of a Faun (L’Après-midi d’un Faune), choreographic notation, ca. 1913–15
Crafting the Ballets Russes will draw on the Robert Lehman private collection of autograph manuscripts of Western music on deposit at The Morgan Library & Museum, in particular early 20th century ballet materials.
On view in New York June 28 through September 22, 2024, the exhibition highlights the rise of women in leading creative roles in the creation of these seminal ballets, including the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska and the dancer/producer Ida Rubinstein. Organized around a series of ballets such as Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird (1910) and Petrouchka (1911), the exhibition features sketches, drafts, and choreographic notations to show how composers, choreographers, and designers together created works of astonishing originality and lasting influence.
On view are over 100 objects including rare music and dance manuscripts, photographs, and costume designs by artists Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, and Natalia Goncharova. A significant series of Nijinska’s drafts and notes from the Library of Congress are on view, showing how she repurposed classical techniques and developed her own unique style.
Additional highlights include an early working manuscript of Firebird, created while Stravinsky was still relatively unknown. In the draft, one can see the edits that Stravinsky made to follow the choreographer Fokine’s ideas. Also on view is an autograph manuscript of Boléro, showing the unfolding mechanical process that underlies the piece, inspired by the factory production lines of the time.
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Janny Chiu /The Morgan Library & Museum
Claude Debussy, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), autograph manuscript, short score (particell), p. 1, 1894
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Janny Chiu/The Morgan Library & Museum
Maurice Ravel, Bolero, autograph manuscript, full score, p. 1, 1928. Dedication “to Ida Rubinstein"
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Anthony Troncale /The Morgan Library & Museum
Maurice Ravel, La Valse, autograph manuscript, solo piano, pp. 14–15, 1920
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Library of Congress
Program for Les Ballets de Madame Ida Rubinstein, Académie Nationale de Musique et de Danse, May 1929
“We are pleased to celebrate our centennial year with a presentation from one of our most significant and cherished holdings at the Morgan,” said Colin B. Bailey, the Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “This exhibition, combining music manuscripts with loans relating to choreography and design, brings some of the most pioneering and enduring early 20th century classical music to life.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay by Lynn Garafola, a leading Ballets Russes scholar. Public programs accompanying the exhibition include Jean-Efflam Bavouzet: Music from the Ballets Russes on July 17, the award-winning pianist performing piano works drawn from music manuscripts on view in the exhibition. Also, on July 25, there will be Deciphering Nijinsky’s Lost Ballet. For 40 years after Nijinsky’s death in 1950, the dance notation for his groundbreaking ballet The Afternoon of a Faun languished in a Parisian archive, undecipherable and unused. In this lecture and dance demonstration, Dr. Claudia Jeschke and dancer Rainer Krenstetter will mix performance and scholarship to recount how Dr. Jeschke “broke the code” of Nijinsky’s lost notation, reconstructing the ballet from his notebooks and making his choreography available for revival.
