In 1912 the festival at the end of the school year provided an opportunity for the first trial performances. The institute of education opened its door to the public, giving the residents of the Garden City and other visitors a glimpse of its work. For a fortnight the festival visitors enjoyed not only public performances of rhythmic gymnastics involving children and young people from the Garden City, but also the second act of Gluck’s opera “Orpheus and Eurydice”. At the Festival Theatre, works of decorative art were displayed from the Hellerau workshops, and the festival was followed by summer courses for rhythmics graduates. It was the 1913 festival which brought major international success. In the years before, Hellerau had received many visits from people in search of inspiration, such as the architects Le Corbusier (the still known as Charles Edouard Jannet), Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe; the director of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev, and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky came looking for choreographical ideas while preparing for Stravinsky's "Sacre du printemps". Many, such as the publisher Jakob Hegner, never left. From their followers and in the wake of the international body of students, an artists’ colony sprang up at the Garden City, producing many artists who set out in entirely new directions, such as Dalcroze’s pupil Mary Wigman, a pioneer of modern expressive dance. In 1913 the festival became a rendezvous for Europe's cultural elite: Upton Sinclair and G.B. Shaw, Stefan Zweig and Martin Buber, Franz Werfel and Rainer Maria Rilke, Lou-Andreas Salomé and Annette Kolb all met up, along with Darius Milhaud and Serge Rachmaninoff, Constantin Stanislavski, Max Reinhardt, Gerhart Hauptmann and Oskar Kokoschka, Henry van de Velde, Else Lasker-Schüler, Kurt Wolff, Ernst Rowohlt, Hugo Ball and Kurt Pinthus, Anna Pavlova and Rudolf von Laban. That year an abridged version of the complete opera “Orpheus and Eurydice” had been rehearsed; Jaques-Dalcroze directed the Royal Saxon Chapel Ensemble, and the part of Orpheus was sung, as it had been the previous year, by the young contralto Emmi Leisner. Yet it was not the musical performances which drew storms of applause from the audience: above all, it was the “movement choruses” or Bewegungschöre, with their expressive body language, rehearsed under Jaques-Dalcroze. Combined with Appia’s production and stage design, along with Salzmann's lighting, they had a very direct effect on the audience. The abstraction and stylisation drew attention to the way Gluck’s music had been translated into form: impressive choreographies were created drawing on Greek tragic choruses. In the audience sat Paul Claudel, whose psychological mystery play “Tidings Brought to Mary”, translated by Jakob Hegner, was performed on 5 October. He had to make do without the stars Tilla Durieux and Alexander Moissi, but his production, adapted to fit the stage and surroundings perfectly, was also a huge success.
