ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that both Le Sacre du printemps and Ala i Lolli deal with prehistoric subjects, involve deity worship, sacrifice and abduction, neither the "plots" nor the music inspired by them are all that similar. Prokofiev's Skifskaya Syuita must serve in place of the composer's unfinished short score of Ala i Lolli which was performed for Diaghilev in 1915 but is almost certainly lost. The scenario Prokofiev and Gorodetsky worked out for Ala i Lolli was set in ancient times and had traditional types of roles: hero, villain, damsel in distress, and benevolent protector. Indeed, Prokofiev's primary theme in Chout—not just the main character's identifying tune, but one that permeates much of the score in leitmotivic fashion—is probably his own invention but cannot be ruled out as his abstraction of a model. Prokofiev fulfilled Diaghilev's demand that Chout be something "truly Russian," but he did so, quite characteristically, on his own terms.
