Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

London, 1912, and the famed Ballet Russes have come to London to perform. Anticipation is high, for Diaghilev’s troupe is renowned throughout Europe.

At the end of their famed performance of Thamar at the Royal Opera House, the Georgian queen stabs her prince to death and throws him into the river. But life mirrors art when the prince is found truly dead, stabbed through the heart in the orchestra pit below stage. But the corpse is not the dancer in the programme. It is his understudy. Powe...