Monaco offers a wealth of cultural activities for both the resident and visitor, with the distinct advantages that they are all within easy walking distance of one’s home or hotel and tickets are available. Tickets for Covent Garden or the Met in New York are almost unobtainable  at any price, yet I heard Pavarotti and Kiri Ti Kanawa from the third row of the Salle Garnier for $65 and had a front seat for the Brubeck Five in the Chapiteau for $10! For the same price (in Euros) you can see a newly choreographed ballet danced by an internationally famous ballet company Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and if you have not yet seen the ballet’s creative director Jean Christophe Maillot’s Romeo et Juliette, you have missed something spectacular in the world of dance .   

Just the name Les Ballets de Monte Carlo evokes memories of la belle époque, when the crowned heads of Europe and great personalities of the day gathered in Monaco for the winter season; when champagne flowed and fortunes were lost at the casino and the suites of the Hotel de Paris were home to the wealthy of the world; when legendary stars of Les Ballets Russes gathered for midnight suppers at the Café de Paris.  

The beauty of the Russian music and dance brought to Paris by émigrés of the Russian revolution swept across Europe and brought Serge de Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Fokine, Balanchine and Massine to Monte Carlo to weave their magic spells on the stage of the Salle Garnier as they merged music and dance to create the great classical ballets which continue to delight audiences throughout the world today. 

According to Arnold Haskell, a writer and friend of Diaghilev, “ … Diaghilev created through others. He prided himself on being a ‘collector of geniuses’. He relied on his flair in the first place, but … the artists must meet, talk, produce ideas … the composer and the choreographer, with the aid of the piano, had to learn to speak the same language. Every season, artists flocked to Monte Carlo, often as his guests … it was his Versailles.” He alleged that Diaghilev once remarked that “if the theatre burned down tonight, a large part of the world’s creative artists would be wiped out.”            

The magic of Les Ballets Russes became a legend. Nijinsky’s L’Apres Midi d’un Faune brought tears of rapture to the eyes of princesses and politicians alike. Danilova’s dancing, the mysticism of Fokine’s ‘Firebird’ and Stravinsky’s strange, wild music fired the souls of poets. Though the legendary Pavlova never danced in Monte Carlo, the elite of the artistic world gathered in the principality in those carefree days before the war which exiled the émigrés once again, this time to America.            

In the United States, one company of Les Ballets Russes, renamed Le Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, continued to prosper with prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova, Maria Tallchief, Frederic Franklin and Igor Youskevitch. It was there that Agnes de Mille created ‘Rodeo’ and Balanchine his famous ‘La Somnambule’. This company never returned to Europe.  

The other company, known as L’Original Ballet Russe, criss-crossed Latin America, through Brazil, Argentine and Mexico, acquiring a patron, the Marquis de Cuevas. They performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1946 with dancers Alicia Markova and Rosella Hightower. Diaghilev had left the company in 1938 and they were directed by Colonel de Basil. He dreamed of returning to Europe, of performing in Paris and London and took the company to Spain, but he died there in 1951 and his company with him.

In 1942, Marcel Sablon, then theatre director in Monaco, founded Les Nouveaux Ballet de Monte Carlo, with ballet master Nicolas Zverev and young dancers Ludmilla Tcherina and Serge Golovine, but it did not survive in those troubled times. At the end of the war, Prince Louis II of Monaco asked Eugene Grunberg to try again. Le Nouveau Ballet de Monte Carlo, with Serge Lifar as artistic director, dancers Yvette Chauvire, Janine Charrat, Renee Jeanmaire (Zizi), Wladimir Skouratoff, Alexandre Kalioujny and Boris Trailine created ‘Drama per Musica’ and ‘Chota Roustaveli’.

In 1974, Lifar joined the Paris Opera and the Marquis de Cuevas took charge of the troupe – again renamed, now the Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo – but three years later it became the Grand Ballet Marquis de Cuevas and Monte Carlo was without its own ballet company until Princess Caroline of Monaco founded the present company in 1985.  

Dancers came to Monte Carlo for the magic … drawn to the tiny stage of the Salle Garnier to dance in the footsteps of the great. Entranced by the history, the romance, the heartbeat of the world of dance, they found its soul amid the whispers and memories and tradition of Les Ballets de Monte Carlo.

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