Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 132 h Firuza Melville Diaghilev-Benois-Bakst’s Scheherazade based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sea suite became a hallmark of Russian Orientalist art at its peak in all aspects: music, choreography, staging and design. It was produced for Diaghilev’s se­ cond Russian season in Paris in 1911, and gained an exceptional fame not only for the founder of the Seasons but for the whole troupe, and mainly for their main designer, Léon Bakst, and not only in Paris. 4 Diaghilev’s Scheherazade: reasons for success The ballet Scheherazade was the most splendid triumph of the entire idea of the Diaghilev’s Seasons and became extremely influential on European culture between the two world wars from ideology to fashion, including Poiret’s fash- ion designs, Cartier’s jewellery and Guerlain’s perfume and cosmetics. Usually, the art of ballet is perceived as a sublimation of refined non-ideo- logical European taste, culture and Europeanness in general. When it incorpo- rates Oriental features, it automatically turns into an ideological tool, sponta- neously reflecting the situation in the society in which ‘orientalist’ would have its traditional colonialist meaning. It is remarkable that the Arabic Shahrazad of the frame story of the Nights represents quite a revealing example of mediaeval Arab Orientalism, or Oc- cidentalism. For the Arabs in Cairo or Aleppo in the early Islamic period, pre- Islamic Persians were associated with that very generic exotic Orient, far- fetched geographically, chronologically and culturally. This is why the misog- ynistic Sasanian king Shahriyar became the king of India and China and his brother Shahzaman was appointed the king of Samarkand. Before cinema and TV, ballet was not just an elitist fashion for the very few: musical drama, ballet and operetta were extremely popular among both the commoners and the social elite, shaping the mass culture of the time with a particular agenda of mainly male, rather low-grade entertainment. Diaghilev’s Scheherazade became the greatest success of the Russian Sea- sons in Paris because it appealed to the targeted audience through its correctly identified stereotypes, namely the French perception of the Russians as exotic Orientals with the unleashed passions of an enigmatic soul, similar to the la- bels, which were given to the Persians in theArabian tales. In his Scheherazade , Diaghilev developed this idea to its highest level: he presented the real, as he 4 Melville F. I. From Les Ballets Russes to Les Ballets Persans, the case of Scheherazade // Ori- entality: Cultural Orientalism and Mentality. Milan: Silvana. 2015. P. 85–99; Melville F. I. Rêves D’Orient, ou Shéhérazade sans Shéhérazade // Designing Dreams. A celebration of Léon Bakst. Ed. by Celia Bernasconi, John E. Bowlt and Nick Mauss. Milan: Mousse Publishing and Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, 2017. P. 54–63.