Stravinsky’s “The Fairy’s Kiss”

“The Fairy’s Kiss,” based on a bone-chilling Hans Christian Andersen story and with a score combining the gifts of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, is something you would think that many choreographers would like to get their hands on, and many have. The first version, by Bronislava Nijinska, was made in 1928, for Ida Rubinstein’s company, in Paris. Rubinstein, not a great dancer but a great beauty, had lent her exotic presence to early productions of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. By 1928, she was older, and stooped, and had had a bad face-lift. Still, she had the money to commission work from Europe’s best theatre artists, and so she got this piece from Stravinsky, who intended it as an allegory: the artist, in return for his gift—the “fairy’s kiss”—gave up his hope for happiness in life. Stravinsky crafted the score out of Tchaikovsky songs and piano pieces and dedicated it to his revered predecessor, who, it was said, had died in despair. The reception of “The Fairy’s Kiss” would not have gladdened Tchaikovsky’s ghost. “It was like a drawing room in which someone has suddenly made a bad smell,” Diaghilev wrote. “Everyone pretended not to notice.” Diaghilev was not a disinterested witness. He felt that Stravinsky should be writing music for him, not for Rubinstein. But the reviewers agreed.