diaghilev

One of the current exhibition going on at The Victoria and Albert Museum is the impressive Diaghilev and The Golden Age of The Ballets Russes.  This Russian-born impresario was  in changing the ballet scene in the early twentieth century.  On display are countless extravagant costumes, intricate small scale mock-up stage models, costume illustrations, painting and drawings for inspirational material, etc.  You really get a great sense of what it really must have been like to see one of the elaborate productions and everything that went on behind the curtains.  Diaghilev was definitely a dreamer and a man of detail and he often enlisted artists and composers like Picasso, Matisse and Stravinsky to collaborate on the productions.  

It is easy to dismiss the construction quality of some of the costumes as looking craft-like but then those thoughts soon turn into astonishment when you remember that his grand visions and ideas were executed and realized during the early twentieth century. 

I can only imagine how impressive it must have been to attend one of the shows and get lost in the elaborate production, like a form of escapism.