Page 6 of Article About Nijinsky's "Faun" in Comoedia Illustre (June 15, 1912). Photos by Studio Walery
"...We were offered an unseemly Faun who perpetrated vile, bestially erotic movements, and disgustingly shameless gestures - nothing more than that. Well-deserved hisses greeted the only-too-realistic mime, the ill-shaped animal body, and the countenance even more repellent in profile than in full face. The public will never accept so brutish a reality.
"Mr. Nijinsky, little accustomed to such a response and ill-prepared for such a role, showed us his other face fifteen minutes later with his exquisite rendering of Mr. J. L. Vaudoyer's charming 'Spectre de la rose.' This is the kind of show the public wants, embodying French charm, French taste, French wit. Whoever seeks, during a long evening, to win the applause of an audience by dint of poetry, emotion, imagination, and beauty will ever seek to draw on these clear wellsprings. The other is doomed to oblivion." [Gaston Calmette in "Le Figaro," May 30, 1912]
So much for French insight.
Page 6 of Article About Nijinsky's "Faun" in Comoedia Illustre (June 15, 1912). Photos by Studio Walery
"...We were offered an unseemly Faun who perpetrated vile, bestially erotic movements, and disgustingly shameless gestures - nothing more than that. Well-deserved hisses greeted the only-too-realistic mime, the ill-shaped animal body, and the countenance even more repellent in profile than in full face. The public will never accept so brutish a reality.
"Mr. Nijinsky, little accustomed to such a response and ill-prepared for such a role, showed us his other face fifteen minutes later with his exquisite rendering of Mr. J. L. Vaudoyer's charming 'Spectre de la rose.' This is the kind of show the public wants, embodying French charm, French taste, French wit. Whoever seeks, during a long evening, to win the applause of an audience by dint of poetry, emotion, imagination, and beauty will ever seek to draw on these clear wellsprings. The other is doomed to oblivion." [Gaston Calmette in "Le Figaro," May 30, 1912]
So much for French insight.