Set design by Léon Zack for the third scene (at the mill) of the ballet, Le Baiser de la fée, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska to music by Igor Stravinsky, 1934.

Bronislava Nijinska had first choreographed Le Baiser de la fée for Ida Rubinstein’s Ballet which premiered it on 27 November 1928 at the Théâtre National de l’opéra, Paris. This production had designs by Alexandre Benois. For Nijinska’s restaging for her own Théâtre de la danse at the Théâtre du Chatelet, Paris, the sets and costumes were re-designed by Léon Zack.

Le Baiser de la fée was an ‘allegorical ballet in four scenes’ with a libretto based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ice Maiden. Stravinsky retained only the outline of the story and composed the score in homage to Piotr Tchaikovsky. He wrote to Benois on 12 July 1928 as they were planning the ballet: ‘The story is simply this: A fairy marks a young boy in his infancy with a mysterious kiss. She claims him from the arms of his mother. She claims him from life – on the day of his greatest happiness, in order to possess him and thus to preserve a never-changing happiness. Again, she marks him with a kiss. I will write a brief preface to the score and the programmes saying that I relate this fairy to Tchaikovsky’s Muse, which is how the ballet becomes an allegory. This muse marked him with her fatal kiss, whose mysterious imprint one senses on all the work of the great artist.’

The third scene of the 1934 production shows a watermill in a barren mountainous landscape.