Stravinsky riot at Rite of Spring

May 29, 1913

At the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Nijinsky's pagan dancers stamped to Stravinsky's shrieking strings and pounding timpani. The Paris audience howled and threw programs. Fistfights broke out in the aisles, and police were called to restore order. Modernism had arrived with a scandal, and the twentieth century could hear its own violent, dissonant pulse in the score.