Petrushka (1911 ballet)

Nijinsky as Petrushka

 

With the stunning success of The Firebird (1910), Sergei Diaghilev, director of the Ballet Russes in Paris, commissioned composer Igor Stravinsky to write a follow-up ballet for the subsequent season. Although Stravinsky’s first idea concerned an ancient tribal ritual, the composer soon found himself fascinated with the idea of a puppet moving to all sorts of the novel orchestral effects that he was experimenting with in his music. Diaghilev was inspired by the notion and quickly suggested a ballet based upon Petrushka - the Russian counterpart of Punch in the popular Punch and Judy shows known throughout Europe and England.

 

Stravinsky loved the idea and immediately went to work on a simple story of love and jealousy between puppets during a tradition Russian festival, set in the early 19th century. The basic premise allowed for Stravinsky to use Russian folk songs as the basis for dances at the fair, and the puppet-dancers would allow him to fully explore the odd and exotic musical devices that he was so intently pursuing.

 

The ballet’s story was quite simple and universal. Russian people gather, drink and cavort and dance at a country festival. A puppeteer unveils three marionettes to the crowd: a clown named Petrushka, a beautiful ballerina, and a handsome, dashing Moor. The puppets perform for the crowd, but later, once they are alone, Petrushka reveals that he is actually in love with the ballerina. He tries to win her heart, but she ultimately prefers the Moor, who goes on to kill the broken-hearted and jealous clown.

 

Petrushka was choreographed by Michel Fokine, and the part of the clown puppet was performed by the legendary dance Vaslav Nijinsky, in a highly stylized manner that stunned the Paris audiences. It was Stravinsky’s second big hit in as many years, and the unique setting allowed him to expand his already-outrageous modernistic compositional techniques to extraordinary new heights.

 

Stravinsky’s Petrushka remains one of the most popular pieces of early 20th century modernism, and it is still performed quite frequently, both as a ballet and as a concert piece. Its extraordinary brilliance and poignance remain ever undimmed. Moreover, its success allowed the composer both the freedom and the confidence to move ahead full-bore on the original idea that would soon result in his third work for the company: his epoch-changing masterwork, The Rite of Spring. After this, the world of Western music would never be the same again.