Diaghilev's death

In later years, Diaghilev’s close friend Misia Sert reminisced about the last time she saw him, on the eve of his death.  He was lying upon his bed dressed in his dinner jacket.  It was terribly hot: “We evoked old memories and you then said to me -- you who had discovered one after another all the composers who were to influence and shake up the music of our time that your secret favorites were Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique and Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.”  Diaghilev’s temperature soared and he was only semi-lucid towards the end, but he hummed and sang snatches of these two favourite works.  He died as he had lived, celebrating music.

"Diaghilev’s Death" by Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky in Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929 edited by Jane Pritchard. 2010. Page 207.