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a signed editorial on his front page under the title “Un Faux Pas” denouncing “the extraordinary exhibition of erotic bestiality and shameless gesture” and demanding its suppression in subsequent performances. Agreeing, if less excitedly, Le Gaulois found the final gesture “de trop,” while Le Temps with customary dignity expressed the “justified discontent” of the French people at this “regrettable adventure.” A report quickly circulated that the Prefect of Police at Calmette’s request had issued an injunction against further performance. In clubs, salons, cafés and lobbies of the Chamber no one talked of anything else; Paris momentarily was again in two camps. The excitable Russian Ambassador, M. Izvolsky, wanted to know if Figaro was attacking the Franco-Russian Alliance. Next day Le Matin published a letter from Rodin defending Nijinsky for restoring “freedom of instinct and human emotion” to the dance. The controversy transferred itself to Rodin, whose supporters issued a manifesto in which Jules Lemaître and Maurice Barrès were now on the same side as Anatole France and Octave Mirbeau along with ex-President Loubet, former premiers Clemenceau, Léon Bourgeois and Briand, Ambassador Izvolsky and Baron d’Estournelles. Forain, unreconstructed, published in Figaro an anti-Rodin cartoon. With every ticket for the second performance sold at a premium, the offending gesture was suppressed, leaving the Faun merely gazing on the veil with doleful regret.

In Vienna that season, where owing to a current Balkan War the mood was anti-Slav, a fiasco was barely averted. At rehearsals the orchestra of the Viennese Royal Opera, which could play anything put before it with accomplished ease, played the Russian music with ostentatious disapproval and deliberate mistakes. Monteux was helpless and when the enraged Diaghilev commented out loud on the behavior of these “pigs,” the musicians downed their instruments and left the stage. Only by extracting an apology from Diaghilev next day was the crisis resolved. In Berlin the Kaiser attended a performance of Cleopatra and Firebird. Preferring the former, he summoned Diaghilev and told him he would send his Egyptologists to see it, apparently under the impression that Bakst’s fantastic decor was authentic and the Russian potpourri a revelation of the real music of Ptolemaic Egypt.

Strauss too came to the performance and afterward complimented Stravinsky, adding a characteristic piece of advice. Referring to the muted mysterious opening of Firebird, where the Prince rides into the enchanted wood, he said, “You make a mistake in beginning your piece pianissimo; the public will not listen. You should astonish them by a sudden crash at the start. After that they will follow you and you can do what you like.”

To capture Strauss for the Ballet was an obvious next task, and the Ballet’s prestige in turn had already interested von Hofmannsthal, who opened negotiations. After obtaining Diaghilev’s financial terms, he suggested to Strauss a ballet on Orestes and the Furies with Nijinsky portraying the hero’s “terrible deed and terrible suffering” and the Furies “bursting forth horribly and triumphantly” in a dance of destruction at the end. It was hardly a fresh idea but Hofmannsthal wrote temptingly that it would provide the occasion for “wonderful, somber, grandiose music.… Think it over and please don’t refuse.” He enclosed a note of the terms which Diaghilev “takes the liberty of submitting to you.” When Strauss promptly rejected the idea, Hofmannsthal hurriedly offered instead a libretto for a ballet based on Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife which he had already written in collaboration with Count Harry Kessler, a German litterateur, amateur in politics and patron of the arts who like other Germans of liberal ideas had no place in official life. Applying pressure to Strauss, Hofmannsthal wrote that if he refused, Diaghilev—who liked the libretto—would commission a Russian or French composer. This worked. “Joseph is excellent,” Strauss replied. “I’ll bite. Have already started sketching it out.”

Trouble