Serge Lifar (1905-1986)

Major partners of the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

Major partners of
the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

A suivre:

Abbé Perrin (Director of...

Directors, ballet masters, stage directors, choreographers, architects... Octave discovers the personalities that have marked the history of the Opera which continues to attract the great names of music and dance.

Serge Lifar was born in Kiev and was mobilized by the Red Army at the age of sixteen. In 1920, he discovered dance fortuitously after accompanying a friend to the studio of Bronislava Nijinska, the sister of the great Nijinsky. It proved to be a revelation… He became her student until the day she joined Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes in Paris. Discovering that the company lacked males, Nijinska presented her own dancers, however, in Diaghilev’s eyes, only Lifar had the necessary grace. As a result, Diaghilev sent Lifar to Italy to train under the Ballet Master Cecchetti to enable him to perfect his technique and hone his style. Lifar originated the leading roles in La Chatte, Ode, and Le Pas d’acier… The Balanchine-Lifar “encounter” produced two masterpieces: Apollon Musagète and Le Fils prodigue. In 1929, Serge Lifar arranged his first choreographic work, Renard, to music by Stravinsky: It proved to be a triumph and a new ballet aesthetic was born. When Diaghilev died in Venice on August 19 that same year, Serge Lifar’s career took another turn. The director-cum-patron of the Paris Opera, Jacques Rouché, asked him to create a ballet to the music of Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus. Balanchine began the choreography but then fell ill so Lifar arranged the entire ballet, modifying the libretto and giving pre-eminence to the role of Prometheus which he, himself was performing. The following year, Serge Lifar was appointed Ballet Master of the Paris Opera and he effectively took over the reins of the Ballet, devoting almost thirty years of his life to it. From the outset, he began instituting reforms: He introduced an adagio class—which ensured that the male dancer was no longer just the ballerina’s “foil”—and he developed his neo-classical style with a fusion of classical and modern techniques. He also created a repertoire composed of his own works (Icare, Entre deux rondes, Istar, Le Chevalier et la damoiselle, Les Animaux modèles, Roméo et Juliette, Suite en blanc, La Réversibilité, Les Mirages, Phèdre and Variations) and the great classics of the 19^th century. In 1947, he arranged the Défilé du ballet to Hector Berlioz’s Trojan March. A Parade unique in its genre and unique to the Paris Opera, the Défilé offers an occasion to see all of the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet along with all of the pupils of the Ballet School together on stage. The famous Défilé now opens each new season. Serge Lifar trained the young Étoile dancers (Yvette Chauviré, Liane Daydé, Lycette Darsonval, Claude Bessy, and Christine Vaussard…), and he revitalised the Corps de ballet. He also introduced evenings devoted entirely to ballet—the so-called “Dance Wednesdays”. Having remodelled the Paris Opera Ballet, he took the company on numerous overseas tours to Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, and the U.S.S.R.. In addition to his talents as a dancer-choreographer, teacher, painter and writer, he was also a brilliant lecturer: he brought dance into the Sorbonne, created a University of Dance and organised exhibitions on the Ballets Russes, Nijinsky, Pavlova, and Pushkin… He died in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had retired to in 1981.