In the evening, the opening of the Diaghilev season: a glittering assembly of the beau monde. I was most interested to hear Poulenc's ballet Les Biches, but was not so much disappointed as dismayed. The material is danceable in a barrel-organish sort of way, but naive. As for the musical material, good luck to him, far be it from me to cross swords with him; obviously he resorts to it because he thinks it reflects the times we live in. So be it. But the truth is he doesn't make particularly good use of it, it all lacks form (the whole thing consists of four-bar phrases tacked on to other four-bar phrases to which they bear no relationship), there is no development, and the instrumentation, though attractive, in in the last analysis a zero.