The Firebird piece, but also as the beginning of the collaboration between Diaghilev and Stravinsky that would also produce the acclaimed ballets "Petrushka" (1911) and "The Rite of Spring" (1913). Igor Stravinsky was the son of Fyodor Stravinsky, the principal bass at the Imperial Opera, St Petersburg, and Anna, née Kholodovskaya, a competent amateur singer and pianist from an old-established Russian family. Fyodor's association with many of the leading figures in Russian music, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and Mussorgsky, meant that Igor grew up in an intensely musical home. In 1901, Stravinsky began to study law at St Petersburg University, while taking private
Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf "Tsarevich Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf" is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in "Narodnye russkie skazki". It is Aarne-Thompson type 550, the quest for the golden bird/firebird. Others of this type include "The Golden Bird", "The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener", "The Bird 'Grip, "How Ian Direach got the Blue Falcon", and "The Nunda, Eater of People". A king's apple tree bore golden apples, but every night, one was stolen. Guards reported that the Firebird stole them. The king told his two oldest sons that the