Venice and Diaghilevs Fateful Performance

Venice became for Diaghilev the space that replaced St. Petersburg. Both Venice and St. Petersburg were museum cities. They had a significant number of architectural and sculptural monuments, which gave them solemnity and pomp. It is precisely the contradictory perception of the city that allows us to speak of Venices boundary. It acts as a dividing line between land and water, city and mirage, life (beauty) and death, objective and subjective, conscious and unconscious. In Venice, Diaghilev established his own spatial laws. He associated with Venetian space existentials of his own existence, including loneliness, fear, death, play, theatricality.