Mercure (Mercury, or The Adventures of Mercury) is a 1924 ballet with music by Erik Satie. The original décor and costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso and the choreography was by Léonide Massine, who also danced the title role. Subtitled "Plastic Poses in Three Tableaux", it was an important link between Picasso's Neoclassical and Surrealist phases and has been described as a "painter's ballet".
Mercure was commissioned by the Soirées de Paris stage company and first performed at the Théâtre de la Cigale in Paris on June 15, 1924. The conductor was Roger Désormière.
Background
The Soirées de Paris was a short-lived attempt by Count Étienne de Beaumont (1883–1956) – socialite, balletomane, and patron of the arts – to rival Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as an arbiter of Modernism in French theatre.John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, pp. 256-262.Ornella Volta, "Satie Seen Through His Letters", Marion Boyars Publishers, New York, 1989, p. 168. He was famed for the extravagant annual costume balls he hosted at his Paris mansion and had enjoyed some success financing theatrical ventures, notably the Darius Milhaud-Jean Cocteau ballet Le boeuf sur le toit (1920).Lynn Garafola, "Diaghilev's Ballets Russes", Da Capo Press, 2009, p. 101. In late 1923, he rented the La Cigale music hall in Montmartre, hired former Diaghilev associate Massine as his choreographer and commissioned an eclectic group of dance and dramatic pieces utilizing the talents of authors Cocteau and Tristan Tzara, composers Milhaud and Henri Sauguet, artists Georges Braque, André Derain, and Marie Laurencin, and pioneer lighting designer Loie Fuller.Billy Klüver and Julie Martin, "Kiki's Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900-1930", Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1989, pp. 132-133, 231. Beaumont's biggest coup was reuniting Massine with Picasso and Satie for their first stage collaboration since the scandalous, revolutionary Diaghilev ballet Parade (1917), and their work was anticipated as a highlight of the Soirées' inaugural season.
It was decided early on that Mercure would have no plot. The libretto has been variously attributed to Massine or Picasso, but the formal concept was Beaumont's. In a letter to Picasso dated February 21, 1924, Beaumont stated he wanted the ballet to be a series of tableaux vivants on a mythological theme, in a lighthearted manner suitable for a music hall. Beyond those stipulations he said, "I don't want to drag literature into it, nor do I want the composer or the choreographer to do so...do whatever you want."Richardson, "A Life of Picasso", pp. 257-258. Satie's input appears to have been decisive in selecting the ancient Roman god Mercury as the subject – and not entirely for artistic reasons.
Conspicuously absent from the project was the fourth key member of the Parade team, Jean Cocteau. While Satie owed much of his postwar fame to Cocteau's promotional efforts on his behalf, he had never really gotten along with the man he described as "a charming maniac."Erik Satie, letter to Serge Diaghilev dated June 19, 1923. Quoted in Volta, "Satie Seen Through His Letters", p. 128. The author's increasingly exaggerated claims for his role in Parade'''s success were a particular source of annoyance for both Satie and Picasso."Cocteau continues his 'boring' tricks of 1917. He's 'boring' Picasso and me until I'm shattered...It's a mania with him: Parade is his work alone...". Erik Satie, letter to Valentine Hugo dated December 13, 1920. Quoted in Volta, "Satie Seen Through His Letters", p. 127.During a 1920 revival of Parade, André Gide met Cocteau backstage and later noted in his journal, "[Cocteau is] well aware that Picasso created the scenery and costumes and Satie the music, but he is wondering whether Picasso and Satie have been created by himself." Quoted in Volta, "Satie Seen Through His Letters", pp. 127-128. In early 1924, just before creative talks for the Beaumont ballet got underway, Satie accused Cocteau of corrupting the morals of his onetime musical protégés Georges Auric and Francis Poulenc and severed ties with all three of them.In January 1924, during the Ballets Russes season in Monte Carlo, Cocteau had taken Auric and Poulenc to opium-smoking parties hosted by critic Louis Laloy. The rigidly moral Satie found this unforgivable, especially since his longtime foe Laloy was involved. See Steven Moore Whiting, "Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall", Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 520. He made the break public in an article for Paris-Journal (February 15, 1924), in which he castigated Cocteau and referred to recent ballets by Auric and Poulenc as "lots of syrupy things...buckets of musical lemonade."Carl B. Schmidt, "Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc", Pendragon Press, 2001 pp.135-136 Auric used his position as music critic for Les Nouvelles littéraires to retaliate and for several months he and Satie took potshots at each other in the French press. Their feud would come to a climax at the Mercure opening.
It was known among the Paris cognoscenti that Cocteau personally identified with Mercury and all that the figure stood for. He invariably attended costume balls (including Beaumont's) dressed as the deity, with silver tights, winged helmet and sandals, brandishing Mercury's wand as he darted among the other guests.Leslie Norton, "Leonide Massine and the 20th Century Ballet", McFarland, 2004, p. 83. Furthermore, he had cast himself as Mercutio in his upcoming adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for the Soirées. Since the ballet was supposed to be a mythological spoof, Satie and Picasso saw in Mercury an opportunity for some veiled mockery at Cocteau's expense. In the final scenario, Mercury is presented as a meddlesome schemer who bounds onto the stage to cause trouble and chew the scenery. The in-jokes did not stop there: according to Belgian music critic Paul Collaer, the risqué supporting characters of the Three Graces – to be performed by men in drag with enormous fake breasts – were intended to represent Auric, Poulenc, and an arch-enemy of Satie's, the critic Louis Laloy.Collaer was a friend of Satie's and one of the very few music critics whose opinions Satie respected. See Whiting, "Satie the Bohemian", p. 523. The creators kept their work secret and Satie jokingly told the inquisitive he had no clue what the ballet was about.
Mise-en-scène
Picasso's commission for Mercure came at a turning point in his career. Although he commanded great respect among the avant-garde as the co-founder of Cubism, his postwar Neoclassical paintings had made him prosperous and fashionable. He had abandoned Montparnasse bohemianism for Right Bank high society, and there were grumblings among younger artists (especially the Dadaists) that he had "sold out to the establishment."FitzGerald, "Making Modernism", p. 140. (His friend Max Jacob referred to this time as Picasso's "duchess period").FitzGerald, "Making Modernism", p. 68. Now he was prepared to reassert his modernist credentials by creating a freer semi-abstract style, and chose this ballet as a suitably high-profile occasion in which to introduce it to the public.FitzGerald, "Making Modernism", p. 137.Picasso did not relinquish Cubism entirely during the postwar years, as the two versions of Three Musicians (1921) attest.
The drop curtain he designed featured patches of muted color (earth tones and pastel shades of blue, white and red) suggesting forms and landscape, over which the figures of a guitar-playing Harlequin and Pierrot with a violin were sinuously outlined in black. A lyre, the invention of Mercury, lies at their feet. A dimensional effect was created through dissociation of line and color. These principles were carried over into the largely monochrome backdrops and scenic constructions. Reliefs of painted rattan and wire were mounted onto large wooden cutouts with moveable parts, which hidden dancers shifted about the stage and manipulated along with the music. Some of them took the place of characters. The three-headed Cerberus was depicted on a circular shield beneath which only the dancer's feet were visible, and Massine described how the Three Graces were transformed into amorphous flats "with plaited necks like telephone extension wires which stretched and contracted as their heads bobbed up and down."Lynn Garafola, "Astonish Me!: Diaghilev, Massine and the Experimentalist Tradition", published in Mark Carroll (ed.), The Ballets Russes in Australia and Beyond, Wakefield Press, 2011, pp. 52-74. André Breton called these puppet-like objects "tragic toys for adults."Marilyn McCully, "Pablo Picasso", Encyclopædia Britannica Online http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/459275/Pablo-Picasso/59634/New-Mediterraneanism In counterpoint to the static poses of Massine's choreography, Picasso's mobile scenery became part of the dance.
After seeing the ballet Gertrude Stein wrote, "The scenery of Mercure... was written, quite simply written. There was no painting, it was pure calligraphy".Quoted in Robert Orledge, "Satie the Composer", Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 233 Roland Penrose elaborated on this, tracing Picasso's inspiration beyond Cubism to his early gifts for contour drawing: "From childhood... Picasso had enjoyed accomplishing the feat of drawing a figure or an animal with one continuous line. His ability to make a line twist itself into the illusion of a solid being, without taking pen from paper, had become an amazing act of virtuosity and a delight to watch. The costume drawings for Mercure are a masterly example of this kind of calligraphic drawing. With characteristic inventiveness, he had foreseen how they could be carried out on the stage... The results in terms of form and movement achieved with such simple means was a triumph."Sir Roland Penrose, "Picasso: His Life and Work", University of California Press, 1981, Third Edition, p. 233.
Music
In early 1924, Satie was at the height of his postwar cachet. He had produced little since his orchestral dance suite La belle excentrique (1921), but his role as "precursor" to Debussy and Ravel was acknowledged, as was his advocacy of young French composers (Les Six and the "Arcueil School"). The March 1924 edition of La Revue musicale contained several laudatory articles about him, and that same month, he traveled to Belgium to give lectures on his music in Brussels and Antwerp.Robert Orledge (Ed.), Satie Remembered", Hal Leonard Corporation, 1995, p. 183. Beaumont trusted him implicitly and his influence pervaded the Soirées de Paris: most of its leading artists were Satie's friends or disciples, including 25-year-old music director Désormière, whose first important engagement this was. Once Mercure was finished, Satie would immediately tackle another big commission from Rolf de Maré of the Ballets suédois; this resulted in his final compositions, the ballet Relâche and the score for its accompanying "cinematographic interlude", Entr'acte.