When Diaghilev was asked about his life, he answered: “I’m personally not interesting to anyone; my life isn’t the point—what matters is my work.”
In his memoirs, Sergei Lifar—the celebrated ballet master who led the ballet troupe of the “Grand Opera” for many years and was a close friend of Sergei Diaghilev—shows us two sides of the life of this remarkable person. First we see Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev—great man, impresario, creator of a new artistic culture and aesthetics, who gathered around himself an astonishingly talented group of artists, dancers, and composers. Then we get acquainted with another, more vivid and intimate image of Diaghilev—a very sensitive, easily offended, and passionate person with a complicated character, who had both many friends and many enemies.