The Russian painter Nicholas Roerich, born in St. Petersburg in 1874, figured prominently in the Silver Age of Russian art at the turn of the century. By the time he left Russia, around 1917, he had painted several hundred canvases and had achieved an international reputation. He continued to paint prolifically in Western Europe, America, Central Asia, and India until his death at Naggar in the Himalayas in 1947. Roerich's paintings continue to be well known in the Soviet Union and India, as do his writings and his activities in the fields of archaeology, education in the arts, Eastern philosophy and world peace. In the West, though, he is best known as a theatrical designer, a reputation due especially to his sets and costumes for Serge Diaghilev's productions of the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor in 1909 and Le Sacre du printemps in 1913. Both ballets were acclaimed at the time of their Parisian premières and became classics of stage décor. In addition to being one of Diaghilev's leading designers during the early years of the Ballets Russes, Roerich carried out commissions for Konstantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater (1912), Sir Thomas Beecham at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden in London (1919), Leopold Stokowski at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1930), as well as for the choreographer Leonide Massine (1944), and others.

Nicholas Roerich, the scenarist and designer of Le Sacre du printemps for the original production, by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, in 1913, built the ballet around the sacrifice of a young maiden. As the climax to a series of ritual tasks by members of an archaic tribe, the Chosen Maiden dances herself to death to assure the return of Spring. In the logic of the rite her sacrifice is seen as a marriage with Yarilo, the sun deity of pre-Christian Slavic mythology. The composer of the ballet, Igor Stravinsky, claimed from the outset that he had conceived the idea for Sacre as he was finishing Firebird in 1910. But an interview with Roerich in the St. Petersburg press and other documentation show that he had already written a scenario when Stravinsky approached him with the notion of a ballet about archaic Russia. Roerich's scenario was entitled “The Great Sacrifice,” and it survives as the second act of what we know as Le Sacre du printemps. Contrasted with the somber tasks and grave tone of the second act are the vigorous games and ceremonies which Roerich and Stravinsky together planned for the first act. Stravinsky marked the score for Act I “Day” and Act II “Night,” a polarity that is carried out in all aspects of the music, decor and choreography.

Though scarcely remembered today, the Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris (The Bat Theater) in its heyday (1908–1943) was an internationally known musical theater under the direction of Nikita Baliev. Founded in Moscow in early 1908, it eventually became, because of the exigencies of history, a touring theater, a company equally at home in Paris, London, New York, and elsewhere. Despite its enormous popularity among general audiences, the Chauve-Souris was the first theater of its kind to enlist in its ranks artists from the Russian Imperial theaters, the public dramatic and light-opera theaters, and the experimental or avant-garde theaters as regular or frequent visiting performers, musicians, or designers. It was also one of the first, if not the first, theaters of its kind (at least in Western Europe) to engage a woman as its choreographer, Mme Elizabeth Anderson. On its first appearance in the West, Parisian critics variously identified the theatrical character of the Chauve-Souris as that of a cabaret, a night club, or a music-hall theater, none of which, as we shall see, adequately defines its nature. To understand the aesthetic premises of Baliev's theater, we need to review briefly the origins of the Chauve-Souris and the early careers of Nikita Baliev, Elizabeth Anderson, and Sergei Sudeikin, the principal designer for the Paris opening. The artistic mastery each brought to the group's first “saison russe” in 1920–21 produced a collaboration that led the critics to call the Chauve-Souris “une école d'avantgarde.”

Stravinsky's first ideas for Les Noces date from 1913, when mention of the ballet first appears in his correspondence, yet they did not come to fruition until the ballet's premiere in 1923. This protracted gestation, the longest for any of his compositions, was largely caused by the impositions and consequences of World War I and the revolution in Russa. Both Stravinsky and the Ballet Russes, the company he had been associated with since 1909, experienced economic difficulties. Without any promised performance of Les Noces, Stravinsky concentrated his efforts on other compositions.

During the genesis of the ballet, Stravinsky reformulated his musical philosophy. Before the war; Stravinsky was composing large-scale works for sizable orchestras, with plots derived from Russian folktales and customs, and melodies borrowed from Russian folk music; a few years after the war, he began composing works for smaller forces that borrowed features from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European music, rather than Russian elements. Both styles — “Russian” and “neoclassical” — are present in Les Noces.