Music: Shocking Faun

Back at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House last week, to begin a tour which will take it to every one of the United States, was the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe. For the first time in the U. S. the Monte Carlo dancers presented the great shocker of the great Diaghilev era: L’Après-midi d’un faune, designed and danced by Vaslav Nijinsky not long before he became so addlebrained that he was interned in a Swiss sanatorium. Last week handsome David Lichine impersonated the spotted faun, gyrating insidiously, blatantly suggesting, as did his predecessor, the throes of sexual desire, the moment of satisfaction. At the erotic conclusion one shocked lady in the audience loudly piped “oh!”