Paris in the Belle Époque of Richard Wagner, he went on to experiment with impressionism in music, atonal music and chromaticism. His most famous works include "Clair de Lune" for piano (written ca. 1890, published 1905), "La Mer" for orchestra (1905) and the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande" (1903-1905). The most revolutionary composer to work in Paris during the "Belle Époque" was the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: "The Firebird" (1910), "Petrushka" (1911) and "The Rite of Spring" (1913). The last of these transformed the
The Rite of Spring Pagan Russia in Two Parts"; the scenario depicts various primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring, after which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death. After a mixed critical reception for its original run and a short London tour, the ballet was not performed again until the 1920s, when a version choreographed by Léonide Massine replaced Nijinsky's original. Massine's was the forerunner of many innovative productions directed by the world's leading ballet-masters, gaining the work worldwide acceptance. In the 1980s, Nijinsky's original choreography, long believed lost, was reconstructed by the Joffrey Ballet in