From an obituary published a few days after Diaghilev's death

And that Diaghilev's most adversely criticised experiments were already understood, and his advanced vision appreciated, came out in a tribute in The Queen:-

"The Russian Ballet has been the most brilliant feature in every brilliant post-war London Season. It has been the artistic expression of the age, something that was laughed at, was loved, was reverenced later on both by the understanding and the non-comprehending who were afraid of being left behind. It was beyond contemporary thought in many ways, and Diaghilev, by presenting the foretaste of what is to come in so many branches of art, will be understood better later on. . .

"It is impossible to appreciate adequately his influence on contemporary art. He made the word 'Russian Ballet' almost a fabulous one, so that a Diaghilev first-night was, artistically a European event.

"He has been called one of the world's half-dozen indispensable men. When unknown people opened their papers one day last week they read of his death. To those who had seen his ballets it was as if the sun had grown cold for a while. They never knew him, but they went about saying, 'Diaghilev is dead.'

"He was to this generation the discoverer of that secret beauty that it could not find alone. His death is the end of an artistic era, and it seems a personal tragedy."

Diaghilev observed by critics in England and the United States, 1911-1929 by Nesta Macdonald. 1975. Page 381.