According to contemporary reports, things came to blows. Objects were hurdled at the stage. Up to 40 people were arrested. To many, the performance was an affront to the art form, the music purposefully divisive and dissonant, the dancing inhuman and chaotic.
The exact nature of the reaction has been muddied in the century since its premier. The word “riot” has been regularly employed, though many historians contend the assessment is overblown. What’s certain, however, is that the packed crowd at Paris’s Théatre des Champs-Elysées were shaken to their core by what they saw the evening of May 29th, 1913.
The curtain opened on the premier a month prior to Igor Stravinsky’s 31st birthday. The Russian-born composer had created a different manner of excitement in 1911, with Petrushka. Starring acclaimed Polish dancer Vaslav Nijinsky as a sentient puppet, the performance helped catapult Stravinsky to international fame. The ballet was a hit on the back of a straightforward score and a humane performance from its dancers.
Those in attendance for Rite of Spring two years later, on the other hand, knew they were in for something altogether different. And in many cases, they were prepared to respond accordingly. Dress rehearsal the day prior had gone off without a hitch, but by the day of the performance, things had taken a turn.
"They had got themselves all ready,” dancer Lydia Sokolova would later say of the audience. “They didn't even let the music be played for the overture. As soon as it was known that the conductor was there, the uproar began.”
Stravinsky’s score was partially to blame. Of note was a bassoon played far higher than standard range, for a number inspired by a Lithuanian folk song. There were jeers and hisses and catcalls from the first curtain raise, ultimately growing so loud the performers could hardly hear the music or one another. Nijinsky, meanwhile, stood backstage, yelling at the dancers for a performance Stravinsky would describe as, "knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down.”
It was the dancing, however, that truly set the audience on edge. The 24-year-old Nijinsky was already in the midst of a controversial streak, causing another commotion mere months prior for his performance in Debussy’s L'apres-midi d'un Faune. French newspaper Le Figaro described the dancer’s performance of the titular faun as “vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of heavy shamelessness.”
Nijinsky’s choreography for Rite of Spring was even more alienating than the music it accompanied. Described alternately as “angular” and “unnatural,” the dancers appeared to possess none of the humanity of Stravinsky’s earlier works. Movements were aggressive and jerky. “With every leap we landed heavily enough to jar every organ in us,” one dancer would later explain. Ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev was said to have flashed the house lights on and off in order to stave off the pending riot.
The extent of the fighting and resulting police presence are matters that have been lost to history. The file at the local Parisian police precinct has subsequently gone missing. But the ballet was performed in its entirety that evening, greeted with ovation from some portion of the audience, battling over the continued sound of jeers.
Tales of the Rite or Spring “riot” would only grow in subsequent years. But so, too, would its acclaim, as it would come to be regarded as a pioneering work of primitivism, ushering in a new era of modern music.
Writing in 1921, TS Eliot would note, “the rhythm of the steppes into the scream of the motor horn, the rattle of machinery, the grind of wheels, the beating of iron and steel, the roar of the underground railway, and the other barbaric cries of modern life; and to transform these despairing noises into music.”
Sources:
Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" with Thomas Kelly https://legacy.npr.org/programs/specials/milestones/991110.motm.riteofspring.html
The riot at the Rite: the premiere of The Rite of Spring https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/the-riot-at-the-rite-the-premiere-of-the-rite-of-spring
Did The Rite of Spring really spark a riot? https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22691267
Premiere of L’après-midi d’un faune https://www.historytoday.com/archive/premiere-l%E2%80%99apr%C3%A8s-midi-d%E2%80%99un-faune