In 1979 I flew out to Sicily with the great Ronald Pickup for a long weekend – he to film a cameo as Stravinsky in a glossy biopic about the dancer Nijinsky, I as a film trade paper observer. On the flight, we joked about the potential pitfalls of such biopics, as in: “Hark, I think I hear Dickens writing his latest novel.”
Cut to the set at the exquisite Bellini opera house in Catania, where Stravinsky sits at a (dummy) keyboard hammering out his latest composition. As he finishes with a flourish, the impresario Diaghelev (Alan Bates) inquires excitedly of its title. “I call it Le Sacre du Printemps,” Pickup replies portentously, adding a helpful subtitle for potential US audiences: “The Rite of Spring.”
At which point I swear that Pickup caught my eye as I sat stifling giggles on the corner of the set.
