I posted last month about the new aria for Danse Russe that Paul Moravec and I are writing. It’s for the character of Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes. In it he describes how it feels to be an impresario who cannot create a work of art on his own.
I thought you might enjoy reading the text, which I wrote in a hotel room in Sarasota a few weeks ago and which Paul is now setting to music in his studio in Manhattan.
* * *
DIAGHILEV (speaking) And there they go. Full of excitement, full of ideas, sure of themselves–and sure they don’t need me. You heard them. (Imitating STRAVINSKY) “He thinks he knows everything–but he knows nothing.”
(Singing) No one will ever know
What happens before the curtain rises.
All the people see is the show,
And no one will ever know
The struggles and the fears
Of the man everyone despises.
My work, my life,
They’ll slip through the fingers
Of memory,
And no one will ever know
What I did,
What I do,
How I make them all come through.
(With mock grandiosity, quoting himself) “I am the impresario,
The man behind the scenes.
I put the players in the pit,
The dancers on the stage…”
(Wistfully) I dream of things,
Beautiful things
That no one in the world
Has ever done or seen.
They flash before my sleeping eyes
Like pictures on a screen–
But not quite clear enough,
Never, ever clear enough,
And then…
Only then…
He gestures to the left, then to the right. STRAVINSKY and NIJINSKY appear from opposite sides of the stage, carrying sticks to which marionette strings are attached. The strings are attached to their bodies. They hand the sticks to DIAGHILEV, who starts to manipulate the two men.
(Briskly) Do this! Do that!
Let’s try a different hat!
The pas de deux is boring
And the clarinets are flat!
The steps are trite,
The tune’s not right,
Fix everything
And fix it now–
We open tonight!
He hands the sticks back to STRAVINSKY and NIJINSKY, who exit.
I cannot dance,
I cannot sing,
I cannot write the simplest melody–
But I can hire a hall
And bring men together
To paint all the pictures
That flash through my mind
In the silence of the night–
But not quite clear enough,
Never, ever clear enough.
Without them, I’m nothing.
Without me, they’re…
(Speaking, with a touch of irony) Something.
But something different,
Maybe better, maybe worse–
But different.
(Singing) And no one will ever know
What I did,
What I do,
How I make them all come through,
How I help them to see
What is new,
What is true.