Music: The Afternoon of Lifar

In London, Serge Lifar had two strikes against him. He had had a bad wartime record—he put on shows for Wehrmacht officers during the occupation, and had been jailed as a collaborationist. Then, probably because he thinks of himself as the one man who can fill Nijinsky’s pink tights, he had chosen to appear in the narcissistic Afternoon of a Faun, the ballet which combines almost everything that most non-balletomanes dislike about ballet.

Last week, when the curtain went up in London’s Cambridge Theater, 41-year-old Serge Lifar, fit as ever but fatter, lay prostrate on a rock, in the faun’s familiar costume: spotted, close-fitting tights, and naked from the waist up. Debussy’s gentle, reedy music was lost in a balcony din of hisses, boos and catcalls. Someone yelled “collaborator” in French; a more irreverent Britisher in the gallery called out “hot dog!” As Lifar picked up a scarf to caress it (it was left behind by a wood nymph) a well-timed whistle split the air. When the curtain came down, there was a cacophonous mixture of cheers and jeers.

Ninette de Valois, director of Britain’s famed Sadlers Wells Ballet, was among the hissers. Backstage, Lifar announced to everyone in hearing: “I was magnificent.” Two London critics agreed, but they were a small minority. The Manchester Guardian referred to “a slight and foolish demonstration of political feeling,” and added tartly: “The audience’s displeasure should much more properly have been reserved for the choreography.”