Dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky created the scenario for Jeux (Games) with artist Léon Bakst for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes after witnessing an evening tennis game in a private garden. Two girls and a boy, searching for their lost tennis ball, are bewitched by the warm evening air, but their flirtatious games are interrupted when another ball lands nearby. Jeux, in its turn, was upstaged by the riotous debut of Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps two weeks later. This first-edition score names the performers who presented the 1913 premiere. Debussy's autograph manuscript score is also at the Morgan, in the Robert Owen Lehman collection on deposit.
Claude Debussy (1862–1918), Jeux, Paris: Durand, ca. 1912 (1913?) printing. Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection.