The image of a Russian estate on the theater stage

On June 4, the Gonzaga Theater will host the opening of the exhibition “The Image of a Russian Estate on the Theater Stage,” a joint project of the Moscow Art Theater Museum and the Arkhangelskoye Museum-Reserve. In the foyer of the theater will be presented 3 models and 20 sketches of scenery from the collection of the Moscow Art Theater Museum, as well as 4 murals brought to the Gonzaga Theater from the theater in the Yusupov house on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow.

Today, a theater with a system of replaceable scenery, built in the Arkhangelskoye estate by Prince N.B. Yusupov in 1817-1818 according to the design of Pietro di Gonzaga, would be called “innovative.” The “scenery theater”, modeled after the Italian ones, became an important element in the history of Russian decorative art.

“The appeal to the unique collection of the Museum of the Moscow Art Academic Theater was due to the study of the process of formation of the visual code of the estate in Russian culture. The founders of the Moscow Art Theater - K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko - brought to the stage of the theater not only the best examples of Russian literature, but also contributed greatly to the creation of a generalized image of the estate in the eyes of the public: almost every production became a landmark in the development of scenography “- says Olga Nestertseva, Deputy Director of the Arkhangelskoye Museum-Reserve for exhibition activities.

For 125 years, a variety of artists have performed on the Moscow Art Theater stage: Vladimir Simov and Boris Kustodiev, Mikhail Dobuzhinsky and Konstantin Yuon, Nikolai Krymov and Vladimir Dmitriev, Vadim Ryndin and Nikolai Akimov, David Borovsky, Valery Leventhal, and many others. The Moscow Art Theater performances associated with the names of A. N. Ostrovsky, I. S. Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov and others, staged by leading artists of the twentieth century, reflected the process of formation of an artistic utopian myth about the culture and life of the Russian estate with all the obligatory theatrical conventions. The most famous productions of the Moscow Art Theater, where the estate appears as the setting: “Woe from Wit”, “Dead Souls”, “A Month in the Country”, “Autumn Violins”, “The Inspector General”, “Warm Heart”, “The Cherry Orchard”, “The Seagull” ", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", "Ivanov" and others.

In the production of “Dead Souls” (V. Simov and V. Dmitriev), the director and artists settled on the principle of object design, limited by the boundaries of the playing point. In this case, if the thing was imitated, it was done with the utmost care, taking into account its original materials, the requirements of style and the typicality of the scene. Stanislavsky was not satisfied with the state of decorative painting and emphasized the task of restoring the traditions of great masters in the theater. One of Stanislavsky’s interlocutors quotes his characteristic words: “Ideally, everything on stage should be written, but this is impossible, since the knowledge of the laws of theatrical perspective, which was inherent, for example, in Gonzago, has now been lost.” It was important for the director to find an artist who could “transfer beauty to a scene from life and nature so as not to crush it or disfigure it during transportation.” Vladimir Dmitriev becomes such an artist for the Moscow Art Theater.

In the minds of many generations of viewers, an estate is necessarily a two-story house with columns and high windows, an estate park with gazebos and sculptures, landscapes and magical water. As associations with Levitan’s landscapes, nature enters into the performance, into the lives of the characters, their destinies. The set designer’s plan continues to be resurrected in the memories of our theatrical impressions with the most vivid picture possible.

The exhibition will be open until September 29, 2024. You can visit it as part of excursions, as well as before concerts and performances that take place at the Gonzaga Theater during the summer season. The theater season will open on June 8 with the concert “Tchaikovsky. Eugene Onegin". The Vocalion Opera Center, with the support of the Bondarchuk Producing Center, will present the classic opera Eugene Onegin in a modern immersive format. Spectators will become participants in the events of the most famous work of Alexander Pushkin and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.