Igor Stravinsky’s Orthodox funeral in Venice on April 15, 1971.

Text and photographs by Jacques E. Cloarec

While we were in New York on a world tour we had planned at the end of 1970, Alain Daniélou and I dined, as I recall, at the restaurant “Chez Georges” with Vera Stravinsky, Stravinsky’s pupil Robert Craft, Nicolas Nabokov, a faithful friend of Stravinsky’s, and his wife Dominique. Stravinsky, already very ill, had decided not to come. He died in New York on April 6, 1971 and, in accordance with his wishes, his funeral took place in Venice on April 15, 1971. He was buried the same day in the beautiful cemetery on the island of San Michele, in the section reserved for Orthodox and Protestants, a few steps from Diaghilev’s tomb. I’m not sure whether Daniélou, who became a dancer in the 30s, met Stravinsky at that time. He knew Diaghilev, and both he and his brother Jean, who later became a cardinal, frequented this aristocratic milieu that also included the poet Jean Cocteau, the actor Jean Marais, the composer Henry Sauguet, the decorator Jacques Dupont and many others (1). Recent research shows that Jean Daniélou not only translated Stravinsky/Cocteau’s Oedipux Rex (1928) from Latin, but also played an active role in shaping the work with both authors. In 1969, Alain Daniélou founded the Institut de Musiques Comparées at the Cini Foundation in Venice, a sister institute to the one he had set up in Berlin in 1963. So we lived in Venice.

Thanks to our boat, we were able to transport various personalities attending the funeral and take part in the various ceremonies. No fewer than two hundred journalists were present in Venice. Following the Orthodox rite, the mass could not be held in St. Mark’s, and the small Greek church was unable to contain the crowd, the symphony orchestra from the Fenice theater and the Italian Radio chorus conducted by Robert Craft. After Alessandro Scarlatti’s Requiem Mass, the Cantiques Requiem were performed.

1- Alain Daniélou, Le Chemin du Labyrinthe, l’Age d’Homme, Lausanne 2015