Bizarre Pagan Sacrifices, Outrageous Costumes, Fistfights at March 11 Luncheon!!

Watch and Listen as Professor Thomas Kelly, Harvard Music Chair, explores the The Riot at "The Rites of Spring". This outrageous premiere had tremendous impact on music since. No one slept thru this "X-Rated" Opera of unusual choreography.

 March 11, 2011 Luncheon
About Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"
Almost no musical work had such a powerful influence or evoked as much controversy as Igor Stravinsky's ballet score "The Rite of Spring". The work's premiere on May 29, 1913, at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, was scandalous. 
 
In addition to the outrageous costumes, unusual choreography and bizarre story of pagan sacrifice, Stravinsky's musical innovations tested the patience of the audience to the fullest. Professor Kelly will explore the history surrounding "The Rite of Spring," its infamous premiere and its tremendous impact on music ever since. 

Kelly suggests that one of the reasons that the Paris premiere of "The Rite of Spring" created such a furor was that it shattered everyone's expectations. "The Rite of Spring" turned out to be anything but spring-like.

Vaslav Nijinsky's shocking choreography was physically unnatural to perform. The music itself was angular, dissonant and totally unpredictable. When the curtain rose and the dancing began, there appeared a musical theme without a melody, only a loud, pulsating, dissonant chord with jarring, irregular accents. The audience responded to the ballet with such a din of hisses and catcalls that the performers could barely hear each other.

Backstage at the premiere, Nijinsky shouted at the dancers while Diaghilev tried to suppress a possible riot by flashing the house lights. Stravinsky himself fumed at the audience's response to his music. 

If nothing else, the ballet's premiere managed to instill in the audience the true spirit of the music. As Thomas Kelly says, "The pagans on-stage made pagans of the audience."--Excerpted from NPR's Performance Today
About Professor Thomas F. Kelly
Harvard University Music Department Chair 
At age 12, Thomas Forrest Kelly became fascinated with the chapel organ at the Groton School, the Massachusetts boarding school he attended. Enthralled by its array of components - multiple keyboards, pedals, rows of red lights - he began taking lessons on the instrument. "It looked just like an airplane cockpit," he recalled. "What 12-year-old boy wouldn't say, 'I want to play that!" From there, it was a short step to becoming fascinated with early music.

Kelly, now the Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music, has come a long way since he first saw that organ. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1973, he taught at Wellesley, Smith, and Amherst colleges before joining the faculty at Oberlin, where he directed the historical-performance program and was acting dean of the conservatory. Kelly returned to Harvard in 1994, and has since served as chair of the Department of Music and as a Harvard College Professor.

A piece of music, he contends, is best understood as part of its own place and time. This approach is reflected in his popular undergraduate course "First Nights," which examines five musical premieres as significant moments of cultural history. Kelly published his lecture material as a book in 2000, and has since written a sequel, "First Nights at the Opera."
--Harvard Gazette October 7, 2009 Article Excerpts By Krysten A. Keches '10, Harvard Staff Writer