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This chapter presents the text of Olin Downes' review of the performance of George Gershwin's Second Rhapsody together with Serge Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony Orchestra in New York, which was published in the February 6, 1932, issue of New York Times. Downes notes that this rhapsody has more orchestration and more development than Rhapsody in Blue. He also commends the superb performance of the Boston Symphony and the conducting of Koussevitsky.

Capellani’s last years back in France were lonely and aimless. He tried unsuccessfully to go back to filmmaking. His health was failing, and he suffered a stroke. By the time of his death, at age fifty-seven, he was already forgotten. His legacy remained unknown, as all family archives disappeared, leaving no trace of his former glory. His grandson started to research his career about twenty years ago, and prints of Germinal and Les Misérables were restored in the 1980s. Capellani was restored to the place he deserves in film history in 2010, when the Bologna Film Festival organized a retrospective of his films.

This chapter examines the role of creativity in resilience in the palliative care setting. It discusses the common knowledge that many famous artists create in order to survive and highlights the stories regarding a myriad of great artworks relating their creation to the darkest of times for their creators. Examples of these are the second piano Concerto of Serge Rachmaninov and Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. This chapter suggests that this same process of creative thinking can be applied to cope with a loss, trauma, or bereavement.

This chapter surveys Blum’s progress as an innovator in programming for Monte Carlo’s chic and audacious audiences. He especially favored high comedy, almost always with music, and evenings of film with orchestra as entertainment. The chapter reviews the many productions that Blum brought to the Théâtre de Monte-Carlo, including operettas, serious drama, and touring dance companies. Beginning with a brief look at the history and ambience of Monte Carlo, the chapter examines Blum’s friendship with Serge Diaghilev when the Ballets Russes came to Monte Carlo. It tells of the deep respect with which playwrights regarded Blum, as he produced, from 1924 to 1935, some 140 divergent and often challenging plays, including those by Pirandello, Coolus, Dumas, Bernstein, Hoffmanstal, and Tristan Bernard, with 40 new works in English, several by George Bernard Shaw. The chapter cites the choreographers whom Blum promoted, such as the Sakaroffs, Loie Fuller, Ida Rubenstein, and Boris Kniaseff. He also helped to organize an international exposition that brought the decorative arts to Paris from all over world. The chapter looks at Blum’s hiring of the Paris Opéra ballet company for a season, and recounts the way in which Blum brought back the Ballets Russes to Monte Carlo after Serge Diaghilev’s death, hiring many of its dancers and the ballet master Serge Grigoriev, and his partnership with Colonel de Basil.

This chapter recounts the progress of Blum’s new company, the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, with Michel Fokine, one of the greatest proponents of modern ballet as its master choreographer, along with many of his talented former dancers. It relates the succession of economic crises as well as the general political turmoil that European countries were experiencing while artists and ballet companies struggled to keep afloat. The chapter describes Fokine’s new ballets for Blum—L’Épreuve d’Amour, Don Juan, and Les Elfes—and audiences’ reactions both in Monte Carlo and on tour to Europe and South Africa. The chapter also reveals how Fokine reclaimed some of his fame as a dance maker with the Blum company. It details the travails that Blum endured as he desperately tried to find funds to keep his company alive as the devastating Depression was soon to assault the European continent. Arguing that Blum still maintained an amicable relationship with Fokine, the chapter ends with new developments: the sale of Blum’s company to wealthy Americans, Serge Denham and Jules Fleischmann, and the passing back of the lead choreographer’s baton from Fokine to Leonide Massine.

This chapter recalls the fascinating correspondence between René Blum, Serge Denham, “Junkie” Fleischmann, and Leonide Massine narrating the acquisition of Blum’s Ballets de Monte-Carlo by World Art, Inc. Letters between Blum and his superiors in Monte Carlo are also cited. When the company was purchased in 1938, and Massine assumed creative control of if, financial constraints forced him to fire many of Blum’s dancers, although he retained Danilova, Toumanova, Slavenska, Krassovska, Youskevitch, Lifar, and a number of others. With interviews quoted from newspaper clippings on his European tours, the chapter gives insight into Blum’s deep commitment to the company and to the arts. With all his might Blum attempted to persevere in his responsibilities as director of the company, but he did so with much difficulty, and Blum’s relationships with Massine, Kochno, and Denham were fraught with painful moments. In his letter of protest to the American Dance Magazine, the chapter relates Blum’s fury over Massine’s claim that the company began with Massine. A letter from Serge Lifar is cited that accuses Blum’s son Claude-René of “informing” on his father to the Nazi authorities. The chapter ends with the brilliantly successful company fleeing to the United States, while Blum tragically remained behind in Paris to be near his son and brother Léon.

Though Harris was Schuman's last major teacher, it was Aaron Copland who gave Schuman the biggest boost in his career, first by helping Schuman win the prize for the Second Symphony and then by encouraging Schuman to present the work to Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Koussevitzky agreed to perform the symphony, and Schuman's host that weekend was a junior at Harvard, Leonard Bernstein. This chapter explores the early beginnings of these new and seminal relationships, with an emphasis on the close friendship Schuman developed with Copland. This chapter also looks at an aborted ballet Schuman was commissioned to write and considers the possibility that some of this music became part of the American Festival Overture.

This chapter continues to trace Schuman's meteoric rise. It begins by revisiting his close relationship with Copland and looks at Schuman's continued belief in musical propaganda. His relationship with Koussevitzky also reappears in this chapter. An aborted commission for a stage work resulted in one of Schuman's most enduring compositions: the song “Orpheus with His Lute.” The chapter concludes with Schuman's decision to leave Sarah Lawrence College to become the director of publications at G. Schirmer Publishers, a decision Schuman quickly rued. Fate would intervene and give Schuman another, more prestigious position from which to disseminate his ideas about music education and contemporary music.

The late 1940s brought Schuman back in touch with his Jewish roots through various encounters and queries that occurred. Leonard Bernstein, in particular, was in a state of wonderment at the birth of Israel, and he tried to interest his good friend Schuman in it. Notwithstanding these various reminders of his own background and heritage, Schuman reaffirmed his coolness to organized religion. He expressed himself through his music, and the Sixth Symphony (1948) is a major testament to Schuman's ideas and ideals. During this period of time, Koussevitzky died, and with him Schuman lost a champion of his music. He gained, however, another champion in the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy. This chapter includes a cameo by English writer Stephen Spender and a look at a withdrawn work that would become the nucleus of the Seventh Symphony (1960).

This chapter considers Blitzstein’s few years of co-habitation with Bill Hewitt; his continued leftist activities, including his involvement with the American-Soviet Music Society and his support for Henry Wallace; the growing censuring of him and his activities by anti-communists, including his inclusion in Red Channels; and his heightened championing of the amalgamation of popular and serious traditions as found in American, including Broadway musicals, and in the Soviet Union, including Prokofiev. This chapter also surveys his work from the immediate postwar years, including an unproduced show about Soviet-American friendship, Goloopchik; his incidental scores for Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest and G. B. Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion; and his ballet for Lincoln Kirstein and the New York City Ballet, The Guests, choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

On April 10, 1930, the Gershwins signed with Fox Studios to write a musical for which George would receive $70,000 and Ira $30,000. George Gershwin's most demanding task was to compose a piece for piano and orchestra, the “New York Rhapsody,” that would serve as the background music for the film's climactic sequence. The reviews on Delicious widely regarded the picture as family entertainment in keeping with the season. Critical opinion itself proved mixed, particularly with regard to the music. Meanwhile, the Second Rhapsody conveniently satisfied a request by conductor Serge Koussevitzky for a new work to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. If the Second Rhapsody has attained heightened prominence in recent years, it still remains disappointingly unfamiliar in the context of Gershwin's most ambitious instrumental works.

The chapter addresses the contributions made by two orchestra conductors, Serge Koussevitzky and Dimitri Mitropoulos. Koussevitzky paid obeisance to the new music from Europe, but this did not keep him from his dedication to American music. He made Boston a tremendously exciting place musically, aligning himself with the creative talents of the region and actually making the city his home. His malapropisms provided a rich store of conversational material for the orchestral musicians whose normal dialogue leaned heavily on the supply of jokes. Conductors need charisma, as everyone knows, and they have to develop some semblance of it if they have none to start with. Koussevitzky was an individual who had somewhat more charisma than average. This enabled him to forestall the disapproval that would normally emanate from the conservative wing in reaction to his programming whereas Mitropoulos admittedly played a lesser role than Koussevitzky in advancing new music.

This chapter describes Ida Rubinstein's starring roles in Serge Diaghilev's ballets Cléopâtre and Schéhérazade. It also considers Ida's relationship with Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, the French Oscar Wilde, which enabled her to look beyond the world of Diaghilev and the fatal woman she had incarnated for him.

In chapter 15 Negri, severely depressed by the loss of her beloved Valentino, wraps up filming Hotel Imperial and immediately throws herself into making another feature. Her next project, Barbed Wire, exhibits strong themes of tolerance and antiwar sentiment, yet many viewed it as pro-German. Growing tired of Hollywood, and losing interest in taking on roles in multiple movies every year, Negri begins to retreat. That, coupled with a change in American attitudes toward the depiction of women in movies, accounts for the box-office slump of Negri's films. Many people, including her Paramount executives, are also put off by the actress's brief engagement and sudden marriage to Prince Serge Mdivani so quickly after Valentino's death. Her fans’ disfavor also contributes to the dwindling revenue from her films.

Chapter 16 discusses the unhappy and turbulent marriage between Negri and Prince Mdivani. Her husband turns out to be a jealous, controlling man, who gambles away much of Negri's fortune. When Negri discovers she is pregnant, Paramount happily pays off her contract, allowing the couple to move to France and focus on their growing family. While there, Negri's loneliness and boredom worsen. She channels her energy into a self-reflective book, titled The Life and Dream of Cinema, about her time as a star, which keeps her spirits up. However, disaster strikes, and a miscarriage throws her back into depression. The marriage to Mdivani, tedious to begin with, crumbles completely as Negri decides to restart her acting career and moves to London.

This chapter talks about Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev—a figure who stands at the intersection of the Stravinsky-Balanchine union. In retracing the origins of the composer and choreographer's collaborations, the knotted relationship of the two men with the baronial director of the Ballets Russes must be considered. The contradictions so evident in the tangled web of Diaghilev's bigger-than-life image have provided the grist for numerous important biographical studies. Beyond the ambiguity and impenetrability to which Nabokov refers, an undercurrent of untrustworthiness was noted by many—Stravinsky and Balanchine included. The broad reach of his influence quickly became manifest, first in the museums, concert halls, and theaters of Paris, then in Brussels, Berlin, London, and New York. More than any visionary of his day, Diaghilev widened the purview of artistic taste, opening new avenues of creative expression at a time when such exploration was anything but safe.

This chapter covers Mae Murray’s divorce from David Mdivani and opera singer Mary McCormic’s divorce from Serge Mdivani. It also tells how Murray and McCormic joined forces to expose the tactics the “marrying Mdivanis” used to charm rich and vulnerable women. The chapter follows Murray’s financial decline and includes information about the loss of her beloved beachfront mansion in Playa del Rey.

During the war, Poulenc navigated among the diverging visions for French music promoted by German occupiers, Vichy officials, and Resistance agitators. The premiere of Poulenc's Les animaux modèles, juxtaposed with Werner Egk's Joan de Zarissa, epitomized the competing agendas of German and French officials for new ballets choreographed by Serge Lifar at the Opéra. The Violin Sonata paid homage to Federico García Lorca, and Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon set Resistance poems to music; both were performed and published in occupied Paris. The wartime genesis and postwar reception of Figure humaine, which set to music Resistance poetry by Paul Éluard, bolstered Poulenc's reception after the war as a celebrated national figure who successfully balanced his public career with his composition and performance of musical secrets.