The Rite of Spring (MacMillan) The Rite of Spring (MacMillan) The Rite of Spring is a one-act ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan in 1962 for the Royal Ballet. The music is Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (1913). The conductor was Colin Davis; the designs were by Sidney Nolan. The first performance was given at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 3 May 1962. The central role of the Chosen One was danced by Monica Mason who continued to tale the part in revivals up to 1982. Mason supervised later revivals, in which the Chosen One was danced by, among others, Tamara Rojo, (2005
The Firebird was looking for fresh compositional talent. The ballet was the first of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes productions to have an all-original score composed for it. Alexandre Benois wrote in 1910 that he had two years earlier suggested to Diaghilev the production of a Russian nationalist ballet, an idea all the more attractive given both the newly awakened French passion for Russian dance and also the ruinously expensive costs of staging opera. The inspiration of mixing the mythical Firebird with the unrelated Russian tale of Koschei the Deathless possibly came from a popular child's verse by Yakov Polonsky, "A Winter's Journey"