May 30, 1913. Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s new ballet, The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du printemps), premiered in Paris and caused a near-riot. The French audience booed Stravinsky’s dissonant and rhythmically complex music and Njinsky’s provocative and non-traditional choreography. The story is that there were fist fights in the aisles, and some concertgoers stormed out in disgust.

Then, in 1940 Disney’s Fantasia made the piece about, not primitive pagan rituals of spring, but rather the primitive pagan story of Evolution. It fits.

Also in 1913, silent film comedians Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin made their U.S. film debuts. Arbuckle was in two of the new Keystone Kops comedies, and Chaplin starred in a film called Making a Living.

On a much more somber note, Woyzeck is a stage play written by Georg Büchner which premiered in Munich in 1913. Oddly enough, Drama Daughter just told me that she is playing the female lead in this influential German play in a production this fall. She also says the play is sad and depressing.