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Ballet comes of age with Sergei Diaghilev

10 September 2022

9:00 AM

10 September 2022

9:00 AM

Diaghilev’s Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World Rupert Christiansen

Faber, pp.384, 25

‘What exactly is it you do?’ asked a bamboozled King Alfonso XIII of Spain upon meeting Sergei Diaghilev at a reception in Madrid, while the Great War raged on in Europe. ‘Your Majesty, I am like you,’ came the impresario’s quick-witted reply. ‘I don’t work, I do nothing. But I am indispensable.’

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