Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / The Romanovs and the Imperial Russian Ballet
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Romanovs as warriors, reformers, even railroad builders. But there's another side of the dynasty that's just as important — their role as patrons of the arts. And I think the most dazzling example is the Imperial Russian Ballet. Luna: Oh, the ballet! That's a world I know a little from the outside — the tutus, Tchaikovsky — but I never connected it to the tsars. Lucas: Right, and that's the thing. The ballet as we know it — the classical technique, the grand spectacles — was basically invented under the Romanovs. Catherine the Great kicked things off, but it really came into its own in the nineteenth century, especially under Alexander II and Alexander III. Lucas: Think about the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. It opened in 1860, named after Maria, the wife of Alexander II. That building became the temple of Russian ballet. And the man who shaped its repertoire was a French choreographer, Marius Petipa, who came to Russia in 1847 and stayed for decades. Luna: Petipa — he's the one behind Swan Lake, isn't he? Lucas: Well, Swan Lake was actually a collaboration. Tchaikovsky wrote the music, and the original 1877 production was choreographed by Julius Reisinger, and it flopped. Petipa and his assistant Lev Ivanov created the iconic version we know, premiered in 1895 — after Tchaikovsky had died. But Petipa's masterpieces include The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Raymonda, all created for the Imperial stage. Lucas: And here's the interesting part: the Romanovs weren't just writing checks. Alexander III, in particular, was a huge ballet fan. He attended performances regularly, sometimes twice a week. And his wife, Maria Feodorovna, had been a ballet enthusiast since her youth in Denmark. She even had a private box at the Mariinsky. Luna: So the imperial family essentially became the ballet's most loyal patrons. Lucas: Exactly. They funded the Imperial Ballet School, which trained dancers from a young age. The school was attached to the theatre, and students lived a spartan life — they'd start at eight or nine and train for hours every day, learning French, etiquette, and of course, dance. The best graduates joined the company, and the tsar would personally approve the top talent. Lucas: But the really explosive period came at the turn of the century, when a young impresario named Sergei Diaghilev burst onto the scene. He wasn't a dancer or a choreographer — he was a connoisseur, a manipulator, a genius at connecting people. And he convinced Nicholas II to support a grand exhibition of Russian art in Paris in 1906. Luna: That sounds like the beginning of something big. Lucas: It was. From that exhibition, Diaghilev went on to create the Ballets Russes, a company that took Paris by storm starting in 1909. He brought together choreographers like Michel Fokine, dancers like Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, and composers like Stravinsky. The Russian tsar's patronage didn't directly fund this — Diaghilev actually worked independently — but the dancers and the whole aesthetic came straight from the Imperial Theatre. Lucas: Now, here's a thought that often comes up when we talk about this era of Russian culture. A lot of the imperial art that's survived — the Fabergé eggs, the Winter Palace, the ballet itself — was made possible by the enormous wealth of the Romanovs, wealth that came from a country with deep poverty. And I think it's worth remembering that the ballet wasn't just a pretty distraction; it was also a political tool. The tsars used it to project an image of power and refinement to the rest of Europe. Luna: That's a sobering thought, but it makes sense. Lucas: And before we go deeper, I want to mention something that really underpins this whole show. This podcast — everything we've been doing, episode after episode — is supported by listeners like you. If you've gotten something out of these conversations, even a couple of dollars a month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo genuinely keeps this going. It's what lets us keep digging into these stories without ads or sponsors. Luna: Yeah, I think a lot of us don't realize how much work goes into each episode. It's a labor of love, and it stays that way because of that support. Lucas: Alright, so back to the ballet. The Ballets Russes premiered works that would change the course of art — and one of them caused a riot. I'm talking about The Rite of Spring, with music by Stravinsky and choreography by Nijinsky. It premiered in Paris in May 1913, and the audience was so outraged that they started shouting, throwing things, even challenging each other to duels. The dancers couldn't hear the music, and the choreographer had to count the beats from the wings. Luna: I've heard about that riot! But why were they so angry? Lucas: Partly it was the music — dissonant, rhythmic, with those pounding irregular accents. And partly it was the subject: a pagan sacrifice, a young girl dancing herself to death. It was a direct assault on everything the refined ballet audience expected. The contrast with Petipa's classical ballets couldn't be starker. Petipa was all about harmony, symmetry, and fairy-tale wonder. Nijinsky was about raw, primitive energy. Lucas: And here's a twist: the Imperial Ballet in Russia actually premiered The Rite of Spring two years earlier, in 1913, but in a more subdued version. The Paris riot was the one that made history. After that, Diaghilev and Stravinsky went on to even more radical works, and the Ballets Russes became synonymous with the avant-garde. Luna: So while the Romanovs were still on the throne, Russian ballet was already moving beyond their control. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the paradox. The tsars created the institutional framework — the school, the theatre, the state funding — that produced these extraordinary artists. But the artists themselves, especially Diaghilev and his circle, were pushing toward a modernism that the imperial court would have found baffling, even subversive. Nicholas II was actually quite conservative in his tastes. He preferred the old classics. He called the new ballets 'decadent' and 'ugly'. Lucas: When the revolution came in 1917, the ballet world was shattered. Many dancers fled abroad, joining Diaghilev's company or forming their own schools in Paris, London, and New York. The Bolshoi and Mariinsky were nationalized, and the art form had to reinvent itself under Soviet ideology. But the diaspora carried the imperial technique to the West, and that's why we have such a rich ballet tradition today. Luna: It's amazing how something so tied to the old regime survived and thrived in exile. Lucas: It really is. And there's a poignant detail: when the Bolsheviks executed the Romanovs in 1918, they also dismantled the Imperial Ballet's special status. The school was renamed, the theatre got a Soviet makeover. But the ballets themselves — Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty — they were kept in the repertoire, stripped of their imperial associations, and eventually became symbols of Soviet cultural achievement. Catherine the Great would probably be amused. Lucas: So next time you see a performance of Swan Lake or The Firebird, remember that you're watching a living link to a dynasty that used art to legitimize its power — and that art outlived the dynasty by a century and more.