BiographyWhen the 25-year old Rudolf Nureyev made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in February 1962, some 70,000 applications for tickets had to be refused; at the end of the performance he and his co-star Margot Fonteyn took 23 curtain calls. Afterwards critic Clive Barnes presciently noted that Nureyev was a "single personality who catches the public's imagination".
As with Maria Callas and opera, many people who had no interest in ballet would know of Nureyev and follow his career with avidity.
Like the earlier and equally celebrated Russian émigré dancer Vaslav Nijinsky - with whom he was often compared, not least by himself - Nureyev possessed an intuitive genius that set him apart from his peers. No matter that the latter had undergone the same training or submitted themselves to the same tough discipline of practice and rehearsal, they would never manage to be his equal; he was a unique force of nature. But as if to counterbalance this great privilege, Nureyev was also one of the most unpleasant artists of his generation.
In 1982, while staying with director Franco Zeffirelli in Positano, the dancer gave a display of what more tolerant friends persisted in considering the fiery Russian temperament.
Angered at not being allowed to have his own way with a young man, he proceeded to break the terracotta pots in his host's garden before moving on to smash a collection of majolica vases in the drawingroom and then get into a physical fight with Zeffirelli. His final gesture prior to leaving the premises was to defecate over the villa's stone steps.
THIS DISPLAY OF that level of anger was not an isolated incident. Some years earlier, while filming the ballet Don Quixote, he found one of his co-dancers unprepared for a particular move, "which made him really angry. He grabbed hold of the chain necklace I was wearing and started dragging me around, and because I was resisting, the metal was biting into my neck."
Forced by the threat of a crew strike to apologise to his victim, Nureyev only managed "I'm sorry," before he added "but you're still stupid."
It might be imagined such appalling behaviour occurred after Nureyev's defection from Russia in June 1961, when, in accordance with his former Soviet masters' worst expectations, he had become corrupted by western decadence.
But Julie Kavanagh provides plenty of evidence that even while a young student at the Kirov school, Nureyev had regularly shown himself wilful, selfish, arrogant and intentionally provocative, in one instance refusing to attend an awards ceremony because other dancers were also to be honoured. His passionate belief in himself meant he rarely saw or acknowledged anyone else's merits.
The origins of this extraordinary conceit lay at least to some extent in Nureyev's impoverished background; as a child during the second World War, he and his family lived in a single room, sharing a communal kitchen and outside lavatory with eight other families.
Nor was his juvenile enthusiasm for dance much encouraged - his father was openly hostile - and he had to battle to be allowed attend classes. On moving to Leningrad and the Kirov in his teens, he was the object of scorn for his want of education and refinement as well as his ethnic origins, many Russians regarding the Tatar race as near-savage.
Nureyev's hunger for knowledge (albeit not of the kind that was ever translated into wisdom) and his material greed - in later years he built up an extensive property portfolio and sought financial advice from the likes of Jackie Onassis and Jacob Rothschild - were understandable responses to the deprivations of his youth.
TO EXPLAIN IS not to excuse, and even in the light of the information gathered by Kavanagh about his background, Nureyev's actions were frequently inexcusable. Shortly before her death, he received permission to fly back to Russia to visit the mother he professed to adore. He had not seen her for 28 years and yet spent less than 10 minutes in the squalid room where she lay, curled up in a knot of pain.
Even in these circumstances, he remained preoccupied with himself, with the state of his emotions and needs. Unable to cope with what he saw, he walked away and never went back, not even for his mother's funeral.
The only person who ever mattered was Nureyev, as had been shown more than three decades before when he embarked on an affair with the wife of his supposedly beloved dance teacher; at the time he was living with the couple.
What quickly becomes apparent in Kavanagh's fascinating narrative is that Nureyev was a monster of selfishness with no qualms whatever about discarding anyone he no longer considered of use to him. Clara Saint, a young South American heiress who had played a pivotal role in assisting his defection was soon dropped.
"Clara helped him to freedom and after that, well . . . Rudi is Rudi," commented Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent's business partner and later president of the Paris Opéra, adding that the dancer "was not a gentleman and he knew very well how to manipulate people".
MANY, OF COURSE, having been dazzled by Nureyev's persona, were willing to be manipulated, and this tolerance of his conduct only fed an already grotesquely inflated sense of entitlement.
He had his supporters, not all of whom could be classified as the sycophants invariably found keeping company with the famous, and a few of them somehow emerge from this tale with a degree of dignity and honour. They are the heroes of this biography which, while authorised, in no way attempts to disguise its subject's many flaws.
On the contrary, the book is an exemplary piece of work, a decade's worth of research that keeps the reader turning its pages even if sometimes in a trance of fascinated horror. Thanks to Julie Kavanagh, posthumously Nureyev remains of interest to the most committed non-balletomane.
Robert O'Byrne is a writer and journalist. His history of Dublin's Gaiety Theatre will be published next month
Rudolf Nureyev By Julie Kavanagh Penguin/Fig Tree, 787pp. £25