Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky. Although Astruc was soon financially overextended, the first season was "nothing short of dazzling." The theatre opened on 2 April 1913 with a gala concert featuring five of France's most renowned composers conducting their own works: Claude Debussy (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune), Paul Dukas (L'apprenti sorcier), Gabriel Fauré (La naissance de Vénus), Vincent d'Indy (Le camp from Wallenstein), and Camille Saint-Saëns (Phaeton and excerpts from his choral work La lyre et la harpe). This was followed the next day with a performance of Hector Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini conducted by Felix Weingartner which included a "dance spectacular" by Anna Pavlova. Later there was a series of concerts devoted to Beethoven conducted by Weingartner and featuring the pianists Alfred Cortot and Louis Diémer, and the soprano Lilli Lehmann. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Willem Mengelberg gave two concerts: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the Paris premiere of Fauré's opera Pénélope (10 May). Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes presented the company's fifth season, although their first in the new theatre, opening on 15 May with Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade (as choreographed by Michel Fokine), and the world premiere of Debussy's Jeux (with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and designs by Léon Bakst). Some in the audiences had been offended by the depiction on stage of a tennis game in Jeux, but this was nothing compared to the reaction to the ritual sacrifice in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on 29 May. Carl Van Vechten described the scene: Marie Rambert heard someone in the gallery call out: "Un docteur … un dentiste … deux docteurs…." The second performance (4 June) was less eventful, and, according to Maurice Ravel, the entire musical work could actually be heard. The first season ended on 26 June 1913 with a performance of Pénélope, and the new one opened on 2 October with the same work. On 9 October d'Indy conducted Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz. On 15 October Debussy conducted the Ibéria section from his orchestral triptych Images pour orchestre, and a week later he conducted his cantata La Damoiselle élue. By 20 November Astruc was out of money and was ejected from the theatre, and the sets and costumes were impounded. The following season consisted of operas presented by Covent Garden and the Boston Opera Company. During most of World War I, the theatre was closed,