The Model of a Modern Impresario: Diaghilev's Russian Background

摘要

AROUND ELEVEN O'CLOCK AT NIGHT ON APRIL 17, 1899, the first day of Russian Orthodox Easter that year, the journalist Viktor Burenin was receiving guests in his apartment in St. Petersburg. Burenin was a prominent columnist on the influential monarchist newspaper New Times (Novoe Vremya), notorious for his unbridled attacks on political liberals and artistic innovators.' Two gentlemen showed up at the party, both of them in top hats, unusual headgear for the season. Burenin did not know them by sight and asked them to take a seat. One of them replied, "That's not what I'm here for,' placed his topper on Burenin's head and smashed it down to his shoulders. The two strangers then took to their heels down the stairs, grabbing their overcoats on the way out. The assailant was twenty-nine-year-old Sergey Diaghilev; his accomplice was his cousin and sometime lover Dmitry Filosofov.