Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe"
On today's date in 1912 Maurice Ravel's ballet "Daphnis et Chloé" received its first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, staged by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and choreographed by Michel Fokine. Some three years earlier, Diaghilev had approached Ravel about composing a ballet, and Ravel started working with Fokine on a scenario based on an old Greek pastoral romance about two lovers separated by pirates and reunited by the intervention of the god Pan. Ravel was a meticulous and slow worker, and his score for "Daphnis et Chloé" ended up taking three years to complete. By the time of its 1912 premiere, internal squabbles in the Diaghilev company and conceptual differences between composer and choreographer had dampened everyone's enthusiasm for the project. Even Diaghilev seemed to lose interest. In his memoirs, Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the first performance, recalled, "At first Diaghilev had been very enthusiastic with Ravel's magnificent score, but for some reason, which I have always thought was due to the weakness of the choreography, his fervor for Ravel and his music diminished to such a low pitch that it became difficult to work as we should have on the premiere." Monteux continued, "But all the musicians in the orchestra, and I might say all the musicians in Paris, knew that this was Maurice Ravel's greatest work."