2024-10-04 10:02:51
At the Ermolova House-Museum, the exhibition “Masquerade” by M. Yu Lermontov was opened on the stage of the theater. The pearl of the exhibition were the sketches of the “imperial” artist Alexander Golovin for the production of Vsevolod Meyerhold at the Alexandrinka Theater. What we didn’t know about Tsarist Russia’s latest performance, an MK correspondent discovered.
The new project of the Bakhrushin Museum was timed to coincide with two anniversaries: the 210th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Lermontov and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vsevolod Meyerhold. The “unifying” link for the director and the writer was “Masquerade” – Lermontov’s first play, staged by Meyerhold at the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theater.
Vsevolod Emilievich began rehearsing “Masquerade” two years before Lermontov’s centenary. The premiere of the large-scale and luxuriously imperial show was scheduled for 1914, but it took place only on February 27, 1917, the day when the general strike of workers turned into an armed uprising and the first shots of the February Revolution were fired . fired in Petrograd.
Six years of intense rehearsals, around four thousand sketches by the most famous artist on the imperial scene, Alexander Golovin, a budget of 300 thousand real rubles (or 150,000 dollars then)…
Meyerhold worked carefully and demandingly: he asked each of the actors to thoroughly know the biography of his character, together with the set designer he created images for each, even the most fleeting, visitor to balls and masquerade balls. Following Lermontov’s plan, he divided the play into five scenes, preceded by five curtains. The fabrics for the costumes and stage curtains were selected in Europe. According to the staff of the Bakhrushin Museum, Meyerhold took inspiration from the majestic Pompeii for the final scenes of Nina Arbenina’s funeral: the once fiery volcano became one of the symbols of decadence and a metaphor for the place where serious passions boiled.
The first impression from the archives presented at the exhibition is admiration for the scope and thoughtfulness of the stage world. They say that Golovin also invented cards for the gaming table. And Meyerhold very carefully ensured that the spectacle, colored by the varied scenery, rushed forward quickly, like a mazurka. Meyerhold’s “Masquerade”, described in detail in correspondence and memoirs, appeared before the public in its visual incarnation. Tamara Tikhonovna Burlakova talks about what the image of the Masquerade meant for Lermontov and Meyerhold:
– Meyerhold follows Lermontov. The masquerade is a form of dance; dancing, both in Lermontov’s time and at the beginning of the 20th century, was, of course, an important element of the culture of noble life. It was not just entertainment, it was also a marriage office, a fashionable school, a space for business communication, a fair for brides… But there was a fairly strict grammar at the balls: whoever mastered this grammar could belong to high school society. A masquerade, in which one put on a mask and the other wore a dress, erased the democratic line of etiquette in communication and there it was no longer possible to follow a rigid grammar, but one could intrigue, one could turn to the other like “you.” And, of course, in this beautiful, joyful and cheerful space, dramas could unfold that, like Lermontov, end in death.
Tamara Tikhonovna also reminds us that for Meyerhold and Lermontov the masquerade, as a process, was similar to a game – and this game did not just consist of acting:
— Dressing up is also a form of play, it’s a form of balance. This was written beautifully by the psychologist Eric Berne, who stated that in ordinary life people do not allow closeness, but in a masquerade game, in which class and social differences are erased, they do.
The exhibition takes into account both of these moods: both dances and games. The densely populated “Masquerade” is, first of all, a “drama of passions”. Costume sketches, stage designs, and mise-en-scène plans contain both excessive excitement and combative fervor. Around the show itself, around Meyerhold’s production and subsequent Soviet performances, everything is very burning.
Costume sketches, set models and staging plans, even from the “distance” of a museum, are striking in their scale (they say so many sketches by Alexander Golovin are rarely shown in one place) and a series of changing faces, each of which is conceived and written by the director.
In addition to Meyerhold, the Bakhrushin Museum also recalls other significant productions of this comedy: on June 21, 1941, their “Masquerade” was presented on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater, director Andrei Tutyshkin invited the Leningrader Georgy Moseev to play the role of the costume designer . In 1950, the legendary Yuri Zavadsky presented his version of the opera on the stage of the Mossovet Theater. Masquerade was performed at the Maly Theater in 1962: the scenography was designed by Enar Stenberg, son of Georgy Stenberg, one of the most famous artists and co-author of Alexander Tairov.
Materialized exhibitions also remind us of the culture of Lermontov balls. The symbolism of the dance is very varied: masks, handbags, scarves and fans become part of the “grammar”. One of the objects on display is Alisa Koonen’s lattice.
The “bridge” to modern theater passes through Valery Fokin’s play “Masquerade. Memories of the Future”, which premiered in 2014. Two costumes from the Alexandrinsky Theater were brought to the exhibition, one of which belongs to Zvezdich.
Employees of the Bakhrushin Museum point out that “Masquerade” is a rather mystical work: it supposedly precedes major historical changes. However, even seeing “Masquerade” as it was presented at the exhibition is something of a shock.
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