Scope and arrangement
This collection relates primarily to the last ten years of les Ballets Russes of Serge Dyagilev. There are a few items from 1910-1911 regarding Michel Fokine. The Papers have been divided into three sections and arranged chronologically. The first comprises holograph copies and some originals of letters written by Dyagilev to various correspondents, such as Michel Fokine, Guido Gatti, Désiré Inghelbrecht, Sergei Grigoriev, Serge Lifar, and Alicia Markova. The second section consists of letters from various correspondents to Dyagilev, as well as letters relating to Dyagilev but neither written to nor by him. The last section contains documents, contracts, and receipts. Some of the material concerns the process in judicial cases brought against Dyagilev by Rastorgoueff, Mme. Bewicke, Gulbenkian, and Nijinsky—various artists of les Ballets Russes—for failure to execute contracts. Other pieces are, by contrast, relative to the cases brought by Dyagilev against Fokine and de Palignac.|||Includes material in French, Russian, and English.
The Serge Diaghilev papers are arranged in four series: