Nijinsky and Diaghilev

How exciting: A new play about Nijinsky and Diaghilev called Rattigan’s Nijinsky. Rattigan is said to have described the dancer and impresario as "the two most famous lovers since Romeo and Juliet”. According to the piece in yesterday's Indie, Rattigan was blackmailed by Nijinsky's widow, Romala Nikinsky, into withdrawing a screenplay commissioned by the BBC in 1974 and Nicholas Wright’s new play explores this. Journalist Paul Taylor wonders why Rattigan, who had never written openly about gay male relationships before, decided he would write about Nijinsky and Diaghilev when Romala was still alive, adding (in brackets) that “(since her husband's death, Romola had somehow managed to become both intensely homophobic and a practising lesbian)”. I wonder if Rattigan knew that (it’s not that uncommon an occurrence) and, if so, exactly what it was that he knew about her and how she would react to his script?

Culture Watch - Tamara Karsavina

A painting of Tamara Karsavina revealed at London’s Wellcome Library after years of being wrongly identified:

See here for the painting.

(And you can see the likeness of the painting to the person here.)

Tamara decided to learn English after achieving the position of Prima Ballerina Assoluta in Corsair in 1909, and so perhaps the pages in her hand are by Swinburne or Robert Lewis Stevenson – two authors she read to help her learn. Or maybe she is reading a letter from home.

Tamara Karsavina lived in Frognal, Hampstead in the early 1960s. Many Hampstead houses declare the names of people who lived between their walls, but there isn’t a plaque on Tamara’s house.

Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes

A Guardian article today on the forthcoming Ballet Russes exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum that doesn’t mention Tamara Karsavina!

Tamara Karsavina was the grace of the three graces (Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spessivtzeva) during the time of Diaghilev. Serge Lifar will tell you. He will also argue that Karsavina's name is inseparable from Diaghilev's (in his book, The Three Graces). I think I will faint if the Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929 exhibition doesn’t include a reference to her.