1-276-827 - Art Media/Heritage Images

Serge Lifar and the Paris Opera Ballet, Paris, 1940-1944. Born in the Ukraine, Lifar (1905-1986) was appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1930. He was dismissed in 1945 because of his socialising with members of the German High Command during the Nazi Occupation of Paris, although Lifar claimed he was in fact working as an Allied agent. Whatever the truth, his lifetime banishment only lasted two years as he was reinstated in 1947.