Let's take a trip to Paris, and who wouldn't like that?
Paris, New York, Vienna, what's not to like?
So here we are in Paris with an overview thanks to Google Earth.
We see the river Seine and on the right bank,
the area leading to the Champs-Elysee.
And at A on the Avenue Montaigne, the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.
In Stravinsky's day and still today, this was a very fashionable area,
tres chic, with lots of expensive shops, Hermes and Louis Vuitton for example.
And on this Avenue Montaigne, as mentioned, was and
is the Theatre de Champs-Elysees,
with its art deco exterior and its art deco interior.
And it was here, on this stage, still one of he major concert halls of Paris today,
that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring premiered on an unseasonably hot night,
29 May, 1913.
Stravinsky had actually written the score not in Russia, or in Paris,
but in Switzerland, working away at a small piano in a small apartment.
As he tells us in some remarkable footage shot, I would guess, about 1955.
I can't trace the origins of this so
I can't give the copyright information here, but let's watch it.
>> Room where I composed the Le Sacre du Pritemps.
>> The composition of the Le Sacre was completed by the beginning of 1912.
>> When I composed the first part of the Le Sacre,
Djagilev invited me to Venice and I started to play him these chords.
59 times the same chord.
Diagilev was a little bit surprised.
He asked me only one thing, which was [INAUDIBLE],
he asked me, will it last a very long time this way?
And I said to the end my dear.