Leonide Massine

Leonide Massine0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. This is a recording as it was being broadcast, rather than the studio recording.

Leonide Massine0:14

and for that reason you may hear some interference, and some degradation in the sound quality.

Leonide Massine0:20

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy two.

Presenter0:41

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:46

This week, our castaway is an outstanding figure in the history of ballet, the dancer and choreographer Leonide Massine.

Speaker 20:49

Ali

Presenter0:54

Mr. Massim, for many years you've owned an island, haven't you?

Presenter0:58

Well, for a good many years, that's true. Yes. Where is it and how big is it? Well, it is uh near Naples and uh My friends always say well, he owns an island.

Presenter1:09

And when they ask how big it is, he said, Well, he sits down on one, put his legs on the second, and his head on the third.

Presenter1:16

Yeah.

Presenter1:18

How well do you think you could endure loneliness?

Presenter1:21

Well, uh

Presenter1:23

You see, um uh perhaps it is peculiar case, but I never am al even when I'm alone, I am uh not alone. I have always my thoughts and my work and uh

Presenter1:34

Uh it is always uh my curiosity push me towards the new horizons.

Presenter1:43

What would you want your records to do for you in isolation? Have you chosen them to evoke the past or bring you great music or bring you the voices of friends? What did you have any?

Leonide Massine1:51

Did you have it?

Presenter1:52

By nature I'm a lover of music because my parents happened to be musicians. You see my father was French horn player in Bolshoi in Moscow.

Presenter2:03

And in Maui, in dramatic theatres, and I probably inherited that love for music. They are simply uh works which one way or the other have been connected either with my admiration of music or with my desire to uh choreograph them or simply as a great monument to drama, to poetry and to music, of course. Well, let's have your first record. What's that to be? What's the first one on the list?

Presenter2:31

Well, the first one is uh Mozart. This is a symphony number forty.

Presenter3:36

The opening of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, Furtwengler conducting the Vianna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter3:43

Let's go into your next record now, mister Massim.

Presenter3:46

Well, next I thought of course of my own land uh and I thought uh

Presenter3:51

of my uh first impressions of um opera.

Presenter3:55

By Musorsky Boris Godunov.

Presenter3:59

Sung by Shalet. I was very fortunate when I came to Europe to join the Agrilyph Company.

Speaker 44:01

I was

Presenter4:06

To be in London at the time he sung.

Presenter4:09

And Diagrif took me to that per marvelous performance and it remained in my memory up to now as I would hear it today. I still think it is a great monument to the Russian music in addition to the marvelous artist and singer that Fyodor Shaleppin was.

Speaker 44:38

Yeah, right.

Speaker 44:42

A joystick my best be born in the earth and beyond.

Speaker 45:24

Or swear on a sea giant space or cream.

Presenter5:33

Shalyapin as parties.

Presenter5:36

Miss Massim, you were born in Moscow.

Presenter5:38

Your father was a horn player at the Bolshoi. Your mother was a singer.

Presenter5:44

My mother o um was at the same time with father in Bolshoi as a dramatic soprano. She was in chorus of Bolshoi theater. Yes. Were you an only child?

Presenter5:54

Now we were seven in family.

Presenter5:56

The others are all mathematicians, engineers, and military men, so I was so to say freak of a family.

Leonide Massine6:00

So

Presenter6:04

How old were you when you went to the Imperial Theatre School? Well, um it was I think about eight or nine, something like that.

Leonide Massine6:07

Uh

Presenter6:12

And while at the school you acted and danced at the ball show and the other.

Leonide Massine6:17

Well after

Presenter6:20

To play in classic uh dramatic uh works of Gogol, you know, Gribayedev.

Presenter6:26

and uh Strofsky all that, you see. And uh from very start I loved to be amongst this marvelous uh uh array of um actors uh although they didn't had names such as Sarah Bernard, but I'm sure they were not very near to that uh in quality. Was acting as important to you as dancing? Oh, enormously important. Enormously. More important? Uh well I don't know, but I was uh fascinated by their uh uh executing their parts, you see, and uh more and more I thought that there's a lot to say in drama, probably more than in ballet.

Presenter7:03

Now one night you were dancing a patado when Djagelef saw you and invited you to join his company.

Presenter7:09

Was it that the prospect of travel that made you decide to join him? Well, this uh joining D is one of my uh sort of enigma decisions. I still don't know why I decided to go. Because I was told by some actors of uh Dramatic of Mali theatre that I should stay, that it is quite wrong for me to to break at that point when I had almost leading parts in some contemporary plays.

Presenter7:37

Where did you make your first appearance with the Diaglev Company? I joined the ballet and I was delighted when I was given a part in Petrushka. That was in, if I'm not mistaken, in Zurich. Yes. And you were soon dancing leading roles. Whose idea was it that you should choreograph, yours or Dyaglev's? Well, it was a Dyaglev idea in a great deal. He remained sort of without choreographer and he saw me developing little by little. My education, my sort of my feeling for painting and music and drama was developing in me.

Presenter8:14

And after all I uh seen mi uh Fawkins working uh and and that of course produced in me very, very um uh strong effect what choreogra how it is made choreography. But at first I said to him very frankly,

Presenter8:31

He said, Can you choreograph? I said, No.

Presenter8:35

Then I turned round, it was in a fezy in uh in uh

Presenter8:40

Florence, I turn round and I I I question myself, have I given him right answer?

Presenter8:45

I turned round, I looked at this marvelous genius of painters.

Presenter8:51

Simone Martini, odd primacet.

Presenter8:53

Well, I think I can.

Presenter8:55

And I said to him that very foolish phrase said, Not one bale, but hundred balis. What was the first one you created?

Presenter9:03

Well, uh Diagram was very extremely careful. First one he gave me to do the uh Pavan by Foray, which is a charming piece of music. And he based his uh this idea of Pavan on the inf uh infanta of Spain. And then very quickly came the three-cornered hat and boutique Fontasque and the good humoured ladies.

Presenter9:26

All great successes when you were in your early twenties.

Presenter9:30

Now in the company who took the place of the leading dancer, the previous leading dancer, Nijinsky, who had quarreled with Djagolevin and left to get married, you knew Dizhinsky Ritu? Yes, I met Nijinski and uh he was extremely kind to me. I saw him dancing spek Laros, which was breathtaking thing, dancing Sylfid and dancing Petrushka.

Presenter9:52

And when I choreographed uh Good Human Ladies, he was extremely uh sort of disposed towards me. He came to my dressing room, he embraced me, he said he would like to dance on one part in that very barrel. You can imagine where I was absolutely in heaven.

Presenter10:09

Let's have your third record. What next?

Presenter10:12

Well, the next record is Stravinsky's Sacred Breton, a writ of spring.

Presenter11:19

Stravenski's The Rite of Spring, the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteu. Now he was the original conductor, wasn't he? Yes, he conducted that.

Leonide Massine11:26

Yeah.

Presenter11:28

of an extraordinary performance in Paris in nineteen thirteen.

Presenter11:33

uh when everybody quarreled and hit each other and insulted each other, and when Djagrev came out and said, please let us finish the performance.

Presenter11:43

Now, with Jagilev gone, you worked for the Monte Carlo company. Were there the same opportunities?

Presenter11:49

Well, um

Presenter11:52

The same opportunities is of course a

Presenter11:55

Hmm, I must say at once no.

Presenter11:57

Why? Because Jaglif was no longer there. Yes. There was no guiding spirit.

Presenter12:03

and I had to live with all I have inherited from Djaglif.

Presenter12:07

Of course that was not a little, and I uh cherish every word and every everything that he said and it remained sort of my guiding spirit all through my career. But the work uh was not uh exactly the same. However, I was struck by very uh sort of lack of uh coordination in my imagination.

Presenter12:30

Um which was too abandoned and that led me to write the theory of choreography.

Presenter12:36

Yes.

Presenter12:37

The thirties was the period of your great symphonic experiment. Well, that was I was not equipped yet with knowledge, but by intuition I felt that might be the door out.

Presenter12:49

Get away from this classic ideology, you know, symmetry, lines, all this conventional and by now to me obsolete form of Bali. You can't remain in same form for over four centuries. Art must be progressing. So that's it. That was the sort of uh trend of my thoughts.

Presenter13:19

as well as those who did many lighter works in that period, Le Beau d'Anube and Guillet Parisienne.

Presenter13:25

And you'd also work quite a lot in the London theatre, in a Noel Card Review in Charles B. Cochrane's Helen.

Presenter13:34

And in The Miracle, that was Reinhardt's production. Yes, I learned quite a lot from uh Reinhardt.

Leonide Massine13:36

Yeah.

Presenter13:40

And my meeting now card, of course, was very, very interesting for me.

Speaker 413:43

Mm-hmm.

Presenter13:46

And I uh always remembered that with a sort of very sympathetic period of although it was not the same as before.

Presenter13:55

You were in the United States uh

Presenter13:58

During the last war. Were those constructive years?

Presenter14:01

Well constructive in that sense that being cut from Europe, we went to Mexico.

Presenter14:07

And I studied uh all the mm Aztec art.

Presenter14:12

And uh Maya art.

Presenter14:14

And when we went to Brazil, I met all the tradition of the Macumba and all the festivities of uh Brazilian gods and uh uh their understanding and their interpretation of Portuguese court, you see, very interesting.

Presenter14:33

After the war, you came back to Britain, or to Europe generally, and in to Britain in particular, you made some films with Michael Powell and Emery Pressberger, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman.

Presenter14:45

Yes, do you enjoy filmmaking?

Presenter14:47

Well, you know, I enjoyed my collaboration with Michael Powell, who is an excellent director, but in general I do not uh have any uh joy from looking at the flat film you see.

Presenter15:01

I uh I need a third dimension, you see.

Presenter15:04

Now since then you've run the festival at Nervie?

Presenter15:08

You've produced or reproduced your ballets in almost every corner of Europe, I should think. How many ballets have you created now? You talked about to Djaglev about creating a hundred. Have you done a bunch of money?

Leonide Massine15:18

My mirror

Presenter15:19

I'm nearing it.

Presenter15:22

The important things was of course Vittori Branca, which is a professor of literature in Padua, an expert on Boccaccio, did ten Boccaccio novels which he sort of treated for choreography.

Speaker 215:40

Hmm.

Presenter15:41

And that we have uh presented with uh uh fourteenth century music, European music, composed of French, British, Spanish and Italian sources and German sources.

Presenter15:56

And that was uh done with Alfred Manussier, who is a leading stain glass artist in France.

Speaker 416:05

Yeah.

Presenter16:06

Your ballets form the heart of the repertoire of most companies in the West, most of the major companies in the West. Now, what about Russia? Have you been back?

Presenter16:14

Yes, I have been back twice in Russia, in 1962 and 1963. And I visited ministry and was invited officially to produce one spectacle in Moscow of my works and one in Leningrad. And I was delighted, of course, and the person with whom I had the contact said, well, you must meet the director, you must meet the choreographer, and then of course you have to wait for a date. I said, well, that's natural, it's very logical. Well, it was in 1963, and I'm still waiting for the date. Oh, what a shame.

Presenter16:50

Let's have a record number four.

Presenter16:52

What will that be?

Presenter16:54

Well, uh

Presenter16:56

I think we we could play Hindimith uh Nobilissima Vizione.

Presenter18:06

An excerpt from Hendemit's Nobelissima Visione, played by the Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by the composer.

Presenter18:13

How do you copywrite a belly? Is it a question of filming it or or photographing it at each stage?

Presenter18:19

Well, uh uh nowadays of quickest thing is the of course the filming. I started that long ago. I was the pioneering in this in this and now Scholar of Milan has a uh fil uh filmetic and the uh Covent Garden has the American Ballet Tenter, the Geoffrey Ballet, all have it now. A a film library. And you have a big collection of ballet films yourself? Well, I have. I I um it is now uh in the Lincoln Center in New York.

Leonide Massine18:33

Coven Garden

Presenter18:47

You still do your work at the bar every morning? Wherever I can. It is uh of course the body is used to it, you see. And if you uh miss it, you feel uh at once uh not the same. Uh you see. It gives uh you lose something by not doing it.

Presenter19:04

Let's have your next record.

Presenter19:06

Bach

Presenter19:07

A depression of Saint Jean.

Speaker 220:10

Yeah.

Presenter20:10

The closing of Bach's Saint John Passion, a performance conducted by Karl Richter.

Presenter20:15

Now, record number six, please.

Presenter20:17

Well, record number six I think should be Wagner, Wagner's Percival.

Presenter21:23

The opening of Wagner's Pasibel.

Presenter21:26

A Bayreuth production conducted by Hans Knapperbusch.

Presenter21:30

Now, on this desert island, mister Massine, could you look after yourself well? Are you resourceful? Are you good with your hands? Could you build a shelter like Robinson Crusoe?

Presenter21:41

Well, I certainly won't be idle, you see. And I uh in my uh life I come to any situation, however difficult, it doesn't frighten me at all.

Speaker 221:53

Yes.

Presenter21:54

I just take it as it comes. I know that sailing is a hobby of yours. Would you try to escape?

Presenter22:00

Well, uh I certainly like um a yacht.

Presenter22:05

I I like any I like the sail, I like all that. Are you good at fishing?

Presenter22:11

Ah, just to look at it, you see, I can't I don't have time or patience to g catch the fish. Well, you will have an opportunity to see if you can enjoy it when you get onto this island. Let us have another record now. What will that be?

Presenter22:26

Well, uh uh I would like to

Presenter22:29

Um reverse to Beethoven now.

Presenter22:33

Of course, when I started to do these symphonic works and uh I suddenly thought, well, since Wagner said that the seventh is the uh sort of apotheosis of dancing, why don't I take don't I take that?

Speaker 422:48

Uh

Presenter22:49

And that led me to take to his seventh symphony.

Presenter23:54

The beginning of the second movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony, Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. And now we come to your last record. What's that to be?

Presenter24:03

Well, I would uh love to have Verdi.

Presenter24:07

I think Falstaff would be good choice, you see, which I understand he composed in very late years of his life.

Presenter24:15

Which part which we hear?

Presenter24:18

Well, just beginning with uh of it with the false off at the inn.

Speaker 424:39

John Honesty.

Leonide Massine24:57

Yeah.

Leonide Massine25:02

Yeah.

Presenter25:16

The opening of Third Is Fall Staff.

Presenter25:19

A performance conducted by George Shelty with Gerind Evans as Falstaff. If you could take just one of your aid records, which would it be?

Presenter25:28

Well, uh being a Russian

Presenter25:31

I would take with me the Boris Godunov, Musarski. Right. And one luxury to take to the island with you?

Presenter25:38

Well, there is a I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't have really any luxuries in my nature and no uh desire of any possessions, you see.

Speaker 425:48

Mm-hmm.

Presenter25:49

I uh like normal things. I like to have a studio, I like to have a house, and uh with simplest surrounding around me, I can

Presenter25:58

I see. But you don't want to clutter the place.

Presenter26:01

I do not want any Louis XIV or Henry VIII. Right. And one book apart from the obvious choices of the Bible and Shakespeare. Well, there is one book that I obviously never leave my hands. It's The Theory of Choreography. I'm sorry to say I'm the author of it. Your own book. When is it coming out, by the way? It is to be out late this summer, I think, in London. Right. And thank you, Leonid Massin, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Well, I'm very grateful to revive my memories of so many wonderful music works, Mr. Plumley, and I hope that the audience will understand why I have this love.

Presenter26:47

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 227:01

The guest in today's programme was Leonid Massine, the interviewer was Roy Plumley and the producer Ronald Cook.

Speaker 227:08

Next Monday the Castaway will be the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Leonide Massine27:22

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.