May 29, 1913 is a date of enormous notoriety in classical music; it is the date on which Le Sacre du Printemps, The Rite of Spring, had its world premiere in Paris, with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Both the music and the choreography of that work shocked Paris and the world, and catapulted the musical world into 20th-century modernism.
As Ivan Hewitt, a classical music critic, wrote in London’s Telegraph in 1916, “The premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is perhaps the most famous scandal in the history of the performing arts. It took place on the evening of 29 May 1913, at the brand-new Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, in front of a glittering audience. The writer Jean Cocteau wrote that ‘the smart audience in tails and tulle, diamonds and ospreys, was interspersed with the suits and bandeaux of the aesthetic crowd.’” The work being premiered was a new ballet from Les Ballets Russes, a company of Russian dancers put together by the impresario Serge Diaghilev. “The Ballets Russes had entranced and shocked Paris ever since their first appearance there in 1909,” he wrote. “What the Parisians especially liked was the way these ‘Northern Savages’ played to the fashion for everything primitive and untamed. All the rumours about The Rite of Spring suggested this new ballet would be more than usually primitive,” he added, noting that, the musical-choreographic team of Stravinsky and Nijinsky had already scored huge successes with The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911).
Interestingly, one element of that evening has been largely misunderstood for many years. Fortunately, author Helen Rappaport, in her fascinating new book, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Epoque through Revolution and War, explains what actually happened, writing that “When the Ballets Russes 1913 season opened…in May, Paris was primed to be shocked by The Rite of Spring, thanks to rumors circulating that it was ‘difficult, violent, incomprehensible.’ All of Le Tout-Paris turned out, therefore, on the evening of May 29 for the premiere, resplendent in their ‘low-cut dresses, tricked out in pearls, egret and ostrich features, and side by side with tails and tulle, the sack suits, headbands, [and] shadowy rags.’”
The audience, she writes, was shocked by the dance, far more so than by the music itself. “Up on stage this multicolored tribe of dancers offended many with their dramatic savagery and uncouth, if not ugly, postures.” Booing and gesticulating began, and as Rappaport writes, “Once the shouts and catcalls began, there was no stopping them, though it was never quite a ‘riot’—a description applied retrospectively that has become part of the Rite’s mythology.” Nevertheless, after all that, The Rite of Spring has come to be one of the most celebrated works of the 20th-century classical music repertoire (though the actual ballet is now rarely performed).
Nothing quite so harshly dramatic has come on the scene in the current landscape of U.S. healthcare, but what is true is that all industry experts and observers agree that the healthcare system is undergoing intense changes. In our State of the Industry survey, we asked senior hospital and health system leaders how they are coping with those changes, and what their current strategies are going forward. Our cover story (p. 4) offers readers a snapshot of where patient care organization leaders are in this time of intense change.
There are no near-riot world musical premieres to worry about, but more and more, senior patient care organization leaders realize we’ve already entered a new world. Read on. And as we describe in our January/February cover story, our State of the Industry survey confirms that the challenges are many; but the creativity of U.S. healthcare leaders offers hope they will be met with vision and skill.
