The Firebird music and art to western audiences. Like Stravinsky, Diaghilev had initially studied law, but had gravitated via journalism into the theatrical world. In 1907, he began his theatrical career by presenting five concerts in Paris; in the following year, he introduced Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov". In 1909, still in Paris, the Ballets Russes was launched, initially with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances from "Prince Igor" and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade". To present these works, Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev's intention, however, was to produce new works in a distinctively 20th-century style, and he
The Rite of Spring the public would receive the work, and suggested that they might react badly if they thought they were being mocked. On the evening of 29 May, Gustav Linor reported, "Never ... has the hall been so full, or so resplendent; the stairways and the corridors were crowded with spectators eager to see and to hear". The evening began with "Les Sylphides", in which Nijinsky and Karsavina danced the main roles. "The Rite" followed. Some eyewitnesses and commentators said that the disturbances in the audience began during the Introduction, and grew in a crescendo when the curtain rose on the stamping