Folklore Fairy Tale in the First “Russian” Ballet of S. Diaghilev’s Entreprise

Abstract

The article analyzes the assimilation of the Russian folk tale in the ballet “The Firebird” created in 1910 by M. Fokin, I. Stravinsky, A. Golovin for S. Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons. The history of the composition of the ballet demonstrates that its main sources were fairy tales from the collection of A.N. Afanasiev “Folk Russian Tales,” such as “The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf,” “The Firebird and Vasilisa the Princess,” “Koschey the Immortal.” To develop individual nuances, they could involve “The Tale of the Daring Young Man, Rejuvenating Apples and Living Water,” “The Feather of Finist Yasny Sokol,” “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” etc. The article shows how the plot of the ballet was built, how the images of fairy tales were processed. Since Diaghilev positioned “The Firebird” as the first proper Russian ballet, it turns out what meaning the creators of the performance put into this concept, what they saw as the “Russianness” of a folk tale. Summing up the results, it can be concluded that there is a connection between the principles of adapting a folklore fairy tale in ballet with the tendencies characteristic of working with folklore material by representatives of modernism and, in particular, World of Art artists.

Keywords

• fairy tale
• ballet “the firebird
• ” “russian seasons” by s. diaghilev
• folklorism
• modernism