The Rite of Spring of the evening Stravinsky had asserted that "Monteux, almost alone among conductors, never cheapened "Rite" or looked for his own glory in it, and he continued to play it all his life with the greatest fidelity". Commentators have often described "The Rite"s music in vivid terms; Paul Rosenfeld, in 1920, wrote of it "pound[ing] with the rhythm of engines, whirls and spirals like screws and fly-wheels, grinds and shrieks like laboring metal". In a more recent analysis, "The New York Times" critic Donal Henahan refers to "great crunching, snarling chords from the brass and thundering thumps from the timpani". The
The Rite of Spring opening Paris run and the London performances, events conspired to prevent further stagings of the ballet. Nijinsky's choreography, which Kelly describes as "so striking, so outrageous, so frail as to its preservation", did not appear again until attempts were made to reconstruct it in the 1980s. On 19 September 1913 Nijinsky married Romola de Pulszky while the Ballets Russes was on tour without Diaghilev in South America. When Diaghilev found out he was distraught and furious that his lover had married, and dismissed Nijinsky. Diaghilev was then obliged to re-hire Fokine, who had resigned in 1912 because Nijinsky had been