The idea for this month’s article began with a postcard. Among recently acquired Glessner family items was a framed real photo postcard from 1916 featuring a portrait of the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet, with a short message in French on the reverse addressed to Frances Glessner Lee. A quick review of Frances Glessner’s journal confirmed how Frances Glessner Lee and Ansermet met. A deeper dive into Ansermet’s reason for coming to Chicago that year uncovered a long-forgotten story of one of the most controversial performances to ever take place upon the Chicago stage.
The Ballet Russes
Sergei Diaghilev (Leon Bakst, 1906)
The Ballet Russes was
the brainchild of the great Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Formed in
Paris in 1909, the ballet company created a huge sensation with its boundary-pushing
performances that combined modern music, innovative choreography, and stunning
visual arts. Among those engaged by Diaghilev were Igor Stravinsky, Claude
Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso,
Henri Matisse, Leon Bakst, and Coco Chanel. The company, which gained broad
exposure during tours through Europe and North and South America from 1909
through 1929, has long been regarded as the most influential ballet company of
the 20th century.
The Afternoon of a Faun
An article, which ran
in the Chicago Tribune the day of the opening, recounted the controversy
over the troupe’s New York and Boston performances, noting that Chicagoan’s
would have a chance to see the performances as originally intended and make up
their own minds:
“In New York the police authorities were shocked by ‘L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune’ (The Afternoon of a Faun) and ordered changes in one scene. As it was originally played the faun seizes a part of the girl’s lingerie and then goes to sleep, using the garment as the covering for a rock on which he reposes. The New York authorities considered this bad form and the faun thereafter had to sleep on a bare rock. Boston went New York one better and officially frowned on the harem scene in ‘Scheherazade.’ Mayor Curley said bare feet were right, but bare legs could not be tolerated. Accordingly, the legs were covered.
“Chicago is going to be given the original uncensored, unexpurgated versions of Serge de Diaghileff’s Ballet Russe – that is, provided Maj. Funkhouser doesn’t order excisions. Mr. Diaghileff upon his arrival yesterday with his company of dancers from the imperial Russian theater let it be known that Chicago will be permitted to judge for itself whether or not the scenes are ‘improper.’ ‘Art has nothing to do with morality,’ it was explained on behalf of the producer. ‘The esthetic test is the only one that can be applied, but what do the police know about art?’”
(Note: Major Metellus Lucullus Cicero Funkhouser was an interesting character. In 1912, he was appointed head of the newly formed Chicago censorship board, which primarily targeted the burgeoning film industry in the city. A veteran of the Spanish-American War and a Second Deputy Superintendent in the Chicago Police Department, he was known for his corruption, taking bribes from the studios, and breaking his own censorship rules. For example, he would take the “naughty” portions of movies he had censored and then host private screenings of those scenes for friends in his home. His actions seriously hurt the local film industry, and he was fired in 1918.)
Bakst design for The Afternoon of a Faun
The eagerly anticipated The Afternoon of a Faun was scheduled for February 16, when “the sophistication of this primitive frontier will be tested by an unexpurgated performance.” A review noted that “the details of an appetent satyr’s voluptuous stupor were again observed with appropriate lenity and there was some applause following the revolting end.” As was the case in previous cities, the company was asked to make changes to the choreography. A review following the February 24 performed noted:
“The news of the Ballet Russe is that yesterday ‘The Faun’ was presented without its final phallic sting and that it seemed to give more pleasure thus than when it had the audacious emphasis of continental bravado. That is to say that the faun indicated himself as a primordial voluptuary instead of visualizing the thing that everybody knew about. It was much more exquisite yesterday, dim, dreamy, primitive, and suggestive in its fascinating profiles and attitudes, with vague, mythical inferences and postures. It was very beguiling.”
Controversy, which can often increase attendance, had just the opposite effect in this case, and audiences remained small throughout the engagement. Critic Percy Hammond questioned why the situation seemed to be worse in Chicago than in other cities:
“Other American communities have not been indifferent to the beauty of these performances and to the munificence of those who make them possible; so why, it is asked, does this center regard their ministrations with a stubborn apathy like that of Caliban to the practices of Ariel?”
(Note: Caliban and Ariel were two servants in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Ariel being submissive, while Caliban is portrayed as rebellious and showing a lack of gratitude.)
Is it controversial or does it just require a new way of thinking?
Although The Faun
received the most pointed attacks, several of the ballets were seen as controversial,
or at the very least, difficult for the audience to understand. But some
critics realized the significance of what was taking place and opened their
minds to what had been laid before them. One example was the first performance
of Stravinsky’s ‘Petrouchka’ which elicited the following:
“Strange though it may seem, the Russian ballet at the Auditorium really includes music. Some of last night’s audience may have doubted the assertion, after hearing Stravinsky’s score for ‘Petrouchka,’ but they had in mind archaic sounds like Beethoven symphonies or Wagner music dramas, or Debussyisms of the moment. If the organized cacophony arising from the orchestra pit didn’t reassure them, the sight of an orchestra should have. It was there and it was busy, under the masterly conducting of M. Ansermet.
“Based upon the gospel that dissonance is just as much a part of music as consonance, the score translates the story’s grotesqueries into a tale funnier than Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain together. But this score is not extravagance. It is eminently sober as to logic, and the creation of a skilled and imaginative mind. Some day, when the ‘dead line’ is less like a ravening wolf, we may be moved to consider these sequences of strange intervals and chord combinations, the tone-colors dizzying to the ear, and the esthetic prophecy of their scientific scheme.”
Scheherezade
“It is a good deal to ask an American audience, at least an audience handicapped by Anglo-American culture, not to be bewildered by the Russian ballet. Our culture, which is rather thin and excessively self-conscious, prevents us usually from any frank and expansive surrender to sheer sensuous beauty. We are bullied alike by our conscience and by our fear of what has been labeled good in art. We deprecate the free gesture. Our motto is Safety First, and Mrs. Grundy never leaves our elbow.
“This is a poor background for enjoying the Russian ballet, which is a gorgeous flower of the east, growing from a life of the imagination never touched by puritanism, freer in impulse, richer in instinct than our own. Yet, after all, we are human, and the appeal of wondrous color and strangely compelling rhythm is so strong in this case that we must yield to it, even be carried away by it.”
(Note: “Mrs. Grundy” is a colloquial term referring to a person with very conventional standards of propriety).
“The question of the moment among the elect is ‘How did you like the Russian ballet?’ If you respond with hyperbolic praise then you are set apart from the common herd; you belong to the Brahmins; you show yourself a true cosmopolite, one who can at will adopt the mood of the Russ, the French, and all others who represent the latest word in supreme culture.
“It is an enviable status. The modern admirers and supporters of the Russian ballet show themselves the true descendants of that small, select group who in the seventies boldly went to see the world’s greatest actress of her day, Sarah Bernhardt, and still more boldly acclaimed her genius to a community that preached against her from every pulpit and fireside as the prototype of the scarlet woman.
“It is to be deplored that of the splendid heritage left us by our Puritan forefathers – a heritage that included frugality industry, self-denial, piety, stern sense of duty, and moral courage – little remains to us today except self-righteousness, false modesty, and a strange reluctance to recognize and enjoy the beautiful.”
Leon Bakst
The sets and costumes were
as important to the productions as the music and choreography. Several were
designed by Leon Bakst, a Russian painter and designer who first came into
contact with Diaghilev when the latter organized a show of Russian painters in
1898. Four years later, Bakst’s star had risen, and he was commissioned to
undertake a work for Tsar Nicholas II. He went to work for the Ballet Russes in
1908, the collaboration lasting until 1922 when he came to Baltimore to work under
his American patron, Alice Warder Garrett (the daughter of John Glessner’s
business partner, Benjamin H. Warder).
Bakst's design for The Afternoon of a Faun
“In Chicago for the last ten days there has been disclosed in the scenes and costumes of the Russian ballet the work of the Russian painter, Leon Bakst. There has never been anything like his achievements in the splendor and harmonies of color available to the Chicago public, and it is a great pity conditions have been such that few have taken advantage of the opportunity to see them. Bakst is a great genius in color, and he offers us his wonderful eyes to see visions gorgeous beyond our imagining. Bakst comes from a world where color is brilliant, and contrast sharp. In America our color in nature, and, therefore, in art, is more reticent, and for that reasons Bakst discovers for us a new world, inundating our senses, matching the myriad tones and thunderous power of the modern orchestra with tones as overwhelming in power and combination.
“The Russian master already has enriched the color sense of Europe, and even America sees a little with his eyes, as the increased strength and daring of color in costume shows. And this, as we began by saying, is the supreme service of the creative artist, that he creates not only, or even chiefly, the objective beauty of his master works, but a new beauty of the world.”
Bakst costume for The Firebird
The Glessners and Ernest Ansermet
Frances Glessner Lee
appears to have been enchanted by the Ballet Russes, attending several
performances. On Saturday, February 19, she invited conductor Ernest Ansermet
to supper at her home, along with Henry Voegeli and his wife, CSO harpist Enrico
Tramonti and his wife, and a Dr. Richardson. The Glessner journal notes that “the
Tramontis and Frances Lee have been much pleased with Mr. Ansermet.”
The press shared their admiration for Ansermet’s conducting. In spite of what was being said about the choreography or the music itself, reviews consistently praised Ansermet’s mastery of the works.
His postcard to Frances Glessner Lee, written on May 5, 1916, from New York, was in thanks for the supper at her home, his brief message being “with respectful and grateful memories of E. Ansermet.”
(Note: Kudos to the U.S. Post Office of 1916. Ansermet addressed the postcard: Mrs. Frances Lee, Prairie Avenue, Chicago, Michigan. A postal worker corrected the state to Illinois and added “1700” in front of Prairie Avenue.)
Ernest Ansermet was born in Switzerland in 1883, so was just 32 years old at the time he first came to Chicago. After several years teaching mathematics at the University of Lausanne, he turned to conducting, accepting the position to lead the Ballet Russes orchestra in 1915. During the period, he had the opportunity to meet Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, and he became a champion of modern music. He founded his own orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in 1918 which toured the U.S. and Europe, making many recordings for Decca Records. Ansermet returned to Chicago in 1936 to open the inaugural season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival and was still actively conducting at the time of his death in 1969. The Orchestre is regarded as the premier orchestra in Switzerland.
John Glessner notes in the journal that Ansermet called on his wife during the CSO matinee concert on Friday February 19. They subsequently attended the Ballet Russes matinee performance on its last day, February 26:
“Frances and I went to Russian ballet on Saturday afternoon at Auditorium. The house was filled – many were children. This was only the second good house of the two weeks engagement – the other being the opening night which was taken by the Eli Bates Settlement House. Wessels and Voegeli, the managers, may lose a considerable sum on the engagement.”
No further comment is made as to what they thought of the performances, although they would have been fully aware of the controversy surrounding them. They saw four ballets performed that afternoon:
Cleopatra: Music by Anton Arensky and others, choreographed by Michael Fokine, sets and costumes by Leon Bakst
Petrouchka: Music by Igor Stravinsky, choreographed by Michael Fokine, sets and costumes by Alexandre Benois
Spectre de la Rose (The Spirit of the Rose): Music by Carol Maria von Weber as orchestrated by Hector Berlioz, choreographed by Michael Fokine, sets and costumes by Leon Bakst
Soleil de Nuit (Midnight Sun): Music by Rimsky-Korsakov, choreographed by Leonide Massine (his first ballet), sets and costumes by Mikhail Larionov
The Ballet Russes leaves Chicago
The final performance
took place the evening of February 26. It had been rumored that The Faun would
be presented in its original pre-censored iteration, “but nothing of the sort
happened. The faun was as chaste as a cold mutton chop.” Attendance had improved
slightly during the second week, but not nearly enough to avoid large financial
losses. Many praised “the New York banker, who backed the enterprise
financially, knowing that he would probably lose in the venture, but anxious to
give Americans a chance to see these Russian chef d’oeuvres.”
Bakst's design for Cleopatra
The Ballet Russes left Chicago and continued its U.S. tour. The conversation no doubt continued long after they had left, and, as had been the case three years earlier when the Armory Show at the Art Institute raised the question of “what is art?” their appearance in Chicago forever made people consider what ballet should be in the 20th century.
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