Ballets Russes public, "Jeux" was eclipsed two weeks later by the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" ("Le Sacre du printemps"), also choreographed by Nijinsky. Because of mental illness, Nijinsky eventually retired from dance; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Léonide Massine was born in Moscow, where he studied both acting and dancing at the Imperial School. On the verge of becoming an actor, Massine was invited by Sergei Diaghilev to join the Ballets Russes, as he was seeking a replacement for Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev encouraged Massine's creativity and his entry into choreography. Massine's most famous creations for the Ballets Russes
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"