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PERFORMANCE AS POLEMIC: TAIROV'S 1920 PRINCESS BRAMBILLA AT THE MOSCOW KAMERNY THEATRE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2010
Extract
Aside from hinting at the rift between the two directors that had become evident after their failed 1918 collaboration on Claudel's The Exchange, Tairov's criticism of Meyerhold's The Dawn reveals a widening gap in the two directors’ fundamental conceptions of the purpose of theatre in the wake of the Revolution. Meyerhold famously declared “October in the theatre” after becoming head of the Theatre Department of Narkompros (the Commissariat of Enlightenment) in the fall of 1920; he attempted to liquidate the Moscow state academic theatres, of which the Kamerny was one, and to require that all theatres stage revolutionary works using the radical methods of “cubism, futurism and suprematism.” Although Tairov had experimented with cubist designs, he had spent his immediate post-Revolutionary years defending theatre as an autonomous art form that should express universal truths rather than being a vehicle for topical content, declaring, “A propagandist theatre after a revolution is like mustard after a meal.”
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References
Endnotes
1. Transliterations follow the most common English spelling in the text proper (e.g., Alexander) and a slightly modified version of the Library of Congress system in the endnotes (e.g., Aleksandr).
2. Aleksandr Tairov, “Sumerki Zor [The Twilight of The Dawn].” Stenograph, 17 January 1921, 3. F. 2328 (Tairov, A. Ia.), op. 1, ed. 22, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (hereafter RGALI); quoted in Russkii sovetskii teatr 1917–1921, ed. A. Z. Iufit et al., Sovetskii teatr- Dokumenty i materialy (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1975), 161.
Translations are my own unless cited from English-language books and articles.
3. Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 151Google Scholar. See also Kniazhevskaia, Tatiana, Iuzhin-Sumbatov i sovetskii teatr (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966), 105, 108Google Scholar.
4. From a public debate reported in Vestnik teatra 78–9 (1920): 16; quoted in Braun, Edward, Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre (London: Methuen, 1998), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5. Koonen, Alisa, Stranitsy zhizni (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1975), 242Google Scholar.
6. Tairov, “Sumerki Zor,” 9; quoted in Iufit et al., 161.
7. Tairov, Aleksandr, Proklamatsiia khudozhnika (Moscow: 1917), 21Google Scholar.
8. Fitzpatrick, 146.
9. Efros, Abram, “Vvedenie [Introduction],” in Kamerny Teatr i ego khudozhniki, ed. Zelikson, Mikhail A. (Moscow: VTO, 1934), ix-xlviiGoogle Scholar, at xxx.
10. Torda, Thomas Joseph, “Tairov's Princess Brambilla: A Fantastic, Phantasmagoric ‘Capriccio’ at the Moscow Kamerny Theatre,” Theatre Journal 32.4 (December 1980): 488–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar [hereafter TPB]; Worrall, Nick, Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage: Tairov, Vakhtangov, Okhlopkov (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Clayton, J. Douglas, Pierrot in Petrograd: The Commedia dell'Arte/Balagan in Twentieth-Century Russian Theatre and Drama (Montréal and Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
11. The archives of Tairov and the Kamerny Theatre at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art have been significantly underutilized by English-language scholars. They contain a wealth of rehearsal notes, promptbooks, correspondence, photographs, and other production materials. Worrall was unaware of them when he wrote Modernism to Realism; Torda was unable to gain remote access when he wrote his dissertation on the Kamerny. Caryl Emerson's recent work on Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, the Kamerny Theatre's dramaturg, and her translation of the Kamerny's unrealized Eugene Onegin are the first major publications in English from this archive. See Emerson, Caryl, “The Krzhizhanovsky–Prokofiev Collaboration on Eugene Onegin, 1936 (A Lesser-Known Casualty of the Pushkin Death Jubilee),” in Sergey Prokofiev and His World, ed. Morrison, Simon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 60–114Google Scholar.
French and German studies that use Kamerny archival material, though excellent, focus on description. See Cheauré, Elisabeth, E. T. A. Hoffmann: Inszenierungen seiner Werke auf russischen Bühnen—Ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte; Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979)Google Scholar; and Amiard-Chevrel, Claudine, “‘Princesse Brambilla’ d'après E. T. A. Hoffmann: Mise en scène de Tairov,” in Mises en scène années 20 et 30 : Les Voiles de la création théatrale, ed. Bablet, Denis (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1979), 127–53Google Scholar.
12. Tairov credited Koonen with much of the theatre's success, stating that without Koonen's “crystalization [sic] of a new craft of acting in the fiery conquest of obsolete methods,” his directorial ideas could never have been implemented. Aleksandr Tairov, Notes of a Director, Books of the Theatre Series, vol. 7 (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969), 64. Much of the repertoire was chosen with Koonen in mind; hence a significant number of Kamerny productions feature a female lead. Many of her most memorable performances were in tragic roles—Salomé, Phaedre, Abbie in Desire under the Elms, the Young Woman in Machinal—but she was equally adept in roles such as the Doll in Debussy's ballet La Boîte à joujoux and as both twins in Lecocq's comic operetta Giroflé–Girofla.
13. Koonen, Stranitsy zhizni, 206.
14. Worrall, 15.
15. Koonen had worked intimately with Craig on his Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre; Craig called her “my ideal Ophelia,” though, to Craig's dissatisfaction, she did not play Ophelia in the final production. For more on their collaboration, see Senelick, Laurence, Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet (London: Greenwood, 1982)Google Scholar.
While Koonen and Tairov were sympathetic to Craig's theatrical aesthetic, Tairov felt that Craig's approach to actors deprived them of creative freedom instead of providing them with creative skills.
16. Meyerhold wrote, probably at least partially in response to Tairov's criticisms of his methods, “Only an amateur, desiring to become an acrobat, is able to achieve the techniques of the balletic arts in his acting. With an acrobat, juggler, boxer, or fencer, how is it possible for such false, affected poses to arise … or the endless rushing about, and the wrists tracing circles and ellipses along planes which are invisible, but imagined by these ‘Kamerniks’ in their ‘atmosphere.’ And … the flits about the stage by these forever elegant … dandies …, even when it seemed that what would be appropriate would be the crudest acting techniques of American eccentrics.” Meyerhold, V., “Vs. Meierkhol'd o Tairove,” Teatral'naia Moskva 33 (1922): 14–15Google Scholar, at 14.
17. Aleksandr Tairov, “Stenogramma lektsii A. Ia. Tairova o spektakle Printsessa Brambilla, prochitannoi v Kamernom Teatre 31 May 1920,” 26 pp. F. 2328 (Tairov, A. Ia.), op. 1, ed. 375, RGALI. Reproduced in Iufit et al., ed., Russkii sovetskii teatr 1917–1921, 168–178 at 173. [hereafter, “Princess Brambilla Lecture.”]
18. Tairov, Notes of a Director, 97; emphasis his.
19. Ibid., 99.
20. Tairov, Aleksandr, Zapiski rezhissera [Notes of a Director] (Moscow: Izd. Kamernogo teatra, 1921), 148Google Scholar; quoted in Torda, TBP, 490.
21. Koonen, Stranitsy zhizni, 239.
22. Zhitomirskaia, Z. V., E. T. A. Gofman: Bibliografia russkikh perevodov i kriticheskoi literatury (Moscow: Kniga, 1964), 18Google Scholar.
23. Konechnyi, A. M., “Artisticheskoe kabare ‘Prival Komediantov,’” in Pamiatniki kul'tury: Novye otkrytiia—Pis'mennost’, iskusstvo, arkheologiia; Ezhegodnik 1988, ed. Kniazevskaia, T. B. (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 102Google Scholar.
24. See Ignatov, S. S., E. T. A. Goffman: Lichnost’ i tvorchestvo (Moscow: Tipografiia O. L. Somovoi, 1914)Google Scholar.
25. Zabrodin, Vladimir, ed., Eisenshtein o Meierkhol'de, 1919–1948 (Moscow: Novoe Izdatel'stvo, 2005), 86Google Scholar.
26. Tairov, Aleksandr, “Printsessa Brambilla: Beseda s A. Ia. Tairovym,” Vestnik teatra 60 (1920): 13Google Scholar. Koonen, who was not involved directly in Brambilla, said that there was no script for the production, only a scenario. It is certainly possible that this version was in scenario form until rehearsals began, as Koonen suggests, and that the fully scripted version was typed for the benefit of the composer, Henri Forterre. Based on the cuts and additions to the text, however, it seems much more likely that Krasovskii's version was from the beginning a full-length play in four acts that the director and actors adapted heavily during the rehearsal process. See Koonen, A. G. [Alisa Georgievna], “Stranitsy iz zhizni,” Teatr i muzika 3 (1968): 97–115Google Scholar.
27. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 168–9.
28. This term is borrowed from Worrall, 35.
29. Tairov, Notes of a Director, 65; his emphasis.
30. For an analysis of Hoffmann's alterations to these images, see Hoffmann, E. T. A., Three Märchen of E. T. A. Hoffmann, trans. Passage, Charles E. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), xixGoogle Scholar.
31. Although, as Donald Posner has argued, Callot's Balli di Sfessania probably do not actually depict commedia characters, they would have been viewed by Hoffmann and by Russian modernist directors as an eyewitness depiction of commedia performances. See Posner, Donald, “Jacques Callot and the Dances Called Sfessania,” Art Bulletin 59.2 (June 1977): 203–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mic, Constant [Konstantin Miklashevskii], La Commedia dell'arte; ou, Le Théatre des comédiens italiens des XVIe, XVIIe, & XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Librairie Théatrale, 1980)Google Scholar.
32. Grimm, Reinhold, “From Callot to Butor: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Tradition of the Capriccio,” Modern Language Notes 93:3 (April 1978): 399–415Google Scholar.
33. L. Krasovskii and P. Antokol'skii, “Printsessa Brambilla” (1920). Typed libretto to the capriccio, 70 pp. F. 2030 (Gos. Kamernyi Teatr), op. 1, ed. 250, RGALI [hereafter, RGALI promptbook]. It is likely that this copy was used by the composer, especially since there are handwritten musical cues, and portions of the dialogue have handwritten punctuation that emphasizes the rhythm of dialogue.
A second version of the script for Brambilla, stamped with the date 1945, has been published in a parallel Russian–German version by Elisabeth Cheauré. This edition, which I call the VTO text (after its original holding archive), is a postproduction version that incorporates numerous handwritten textual changes from the previous edition. While it shows how the text was simplified over the course of Brambilla's rehearsals and run, this version omits most of the copious stage directions, causing confusion as to where and why action is taking place. L. Krasovskii and P. Antokol'skii, “‘Printsessa Brambilla’: Kaprichchio v 4 deistviakh; Tekst po Gofmanu Krasovskogo i Antokol'skogo,” [1920], 71 pp., stamped 1945, call number III-Н/П–76, Central Scientific Library of the Russian Federation's Theatre Workers’ Union (STD, formerly VTO), Moscow.
34. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 172.
35. Act 2, Tableau 1, Scene 4, RGALI promptbook, 23. All quotations are from this version of the text. In several cases, lines in the RGALI promptbook are illegible. When I am able to determine that these lines are likely identical in the VTO text, I substitute accordingly.
36. Act 2, Tableau 1, Scene 3, 19. In order to convey the ways in which the Brambilla promtbook text evolved, I have indicated any handwritten changes to the original with angled brackets and stage directions with italics within parentheses. My omissions are indicated by ellipses within brackets.
37. Act 2, Tableau 1, Scene 3, 21. This description of Giglio's vision does not appear in the VTO text.
38. Act 3, Tableau 1, Scene 6, 43.
39. Act 2, Tableau 1, Scene 3, 20.
40. Act 4, Tableau 7, Scene 10, 68.
41. Act 2, Tableau 1, Scene 8, 25. This description is crossed out in the RGALI promptbook but is very similar to photographic depictions of Giglio in the production.
42. This entire scene is cut in the VTO text. Act 3, Tableau 5, Scene 1, RGALI promptbook, 46.
43. Tairov, Notes of a Director, 125.
44. Act 3, Tableau 5, Scene 3, 50.
45. Tairov, Notes of a Director, 124.
46. Act 3, Tableau 6, Scene 5, 55–6.
47. Tairov, Notes of a Director, 68.
48. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 173.
49. Efros, xxx.
50. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 173.
51. Ibid., 172.
52. Torda, TBP, 493.
53. Act 3, Tableau 1, Scene 7, 45.
54. Rudnitsky, Konstantin, Russian and Soviet Theater 1905–1932, ed. Milne, Lesley, trans. Permar, Roxane (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 105, 147Google Scholar.
55. “Iakulov,” in Teatral'naia entsiklopediia, ed. S. S. Mokul'skii, 5 vols. (Moscow: Gos. nauk. izdatel'stvo “Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia,” 1961–7), 5:1087.
56. S. S. Ignatov, “Printsessa Brambilla v Moskovskom Kamernom Teatre,” 13-14. Typed manuscript with handwritten corrections, 19 pp. F. 2328 (Tairov, A. Ia.), op. 1, ed. 380, RGALI.
57. Many directors of Tairov's day sought to create stage architecture that captured or complemented the rhythm of the actors’ movement, of the music, and/or of the play itself. One of the most famous examples is Adolphe Appia's “Rhythmic Spaces,” a series of twenty designs Appia created for Émile Jaques-Dalcroze to help clarify the relationship between theatrical space, time, music, and movement. For an in-depth examination of their collaboration, see Mahmoud Hammam Abdel-Latif, “Rhythmic Space and Rhythmic Movement: The Adolphe Appia/Jaques-Dalcroze Collaboration” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1988).
58. Iakulov, G. B., “Po povodu ‘Printsessy Brambilly’. (Beseda s G. B. Iakulovym),” Vestnik teatra 65 (1920): 12Google Scholar.
59. Efros, xxxi. Iakulov avoided being associated with any one artistic movement, but according to Bowlt, he “derived much of his strength from” cubism, futurism, and constructivism. John E. Bowlt, “The Construction of Caprice: The Russian Avant-Garde Onstage,” 61-83, at 66, in Nancy Van Norman Baer et al., Theatre in Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design, 1913–1935, exh. cat. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991).
60. Margolin, Samiul, Khudozhnik teatra za 15 let (Moscow: Ogiz, Gos. izd. Izobrazitel'nykh Iskusstv, 1933), 49Google Scholar; quoted in Torda, TBP, 495.
61. Torda, TBP, 492.
62. Florence Gilliam, “The Kamerny Theatre of Moscow,” The Freeman, 23 May 1923, 255-8, at 256. See also Torda, TBP, 493.
63. Gilliam, 256.
64. Derzhavin, Konstantin, Kniga o Kamernom Teatre 1914–1934 (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1934), 99Google Scholar.
65. Iufit et al., 175; quoted in Torda, TBP, 493.
66. Nikolai Bykov, “Pervaia vstrecha s Kamernym Teatrom,” [1970s], 17. Typed manuscript with handwritten corrections, 26 pp. Manuscript Division, f. 526 (Koonen, Tairov), ed. 135, Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow.
67. Sokolov (Sokoloff in emigration) also gave solo marionette performances while on tour with the Theatre, Kamerny, specializing in “short musical and commedia dell'arte items.” Henryk Jurkowski, A History of European Puppetry, vol. 2, The Twentieth Century, collab. ed. Francis, Penny (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), 32Google Scholar.
68. Worrall, 33.
69. “Stseny i detvuiushikh lits postanovki Printsessa Brambilla (po Gofmanu) postavlen A. Ia. Tairova (Khudozhnik G. B. Iakulov) v Kamernom Teatre,” (1920), 20 photographs. F. 2328 (Tairov, A. Ia.), op. 1, ed. 378, RGALI. This image is also reproduced in Amiard-Chevrel, 142.
70. Bykov, 13.
71. Ignatov, “Printsessa Brambilla v Moskovskom Kamernom Teatre,” 9.
72. Koonen describes the roles of Celionati and the master tailor Bescapi as having been portrayed in a grotesque manner. In Tairov's case, this refers to a superficial kind of exaggeration rather than to any underlying Kamerny theory of Hoffmann and the grotesque. See A. G. Koonen, “Vospominaniia: Kamernyi Teatr v pervye gody revoliutsii,” in Iufit et al., ed., 163–168, at 166.
73. Ignatov, “Printsessa Brambilla v Moskovskom Kamernom Teatre,” 15.
74. Derzhavin, 99. Derzhavin probably uses the word cabotinage after Meyerhold's similar use of cabotin [histrion, strolling player] in his famous essay “The Fairground Booth.” See Meyerhold, Vsevelod, “The Fairground Booth,” in Meyerhold on Theatre, ed. and trans. Braun, Edward (New York: Hill & Wang, 1969), 119–42Google Scholar.
75. For a scene-by-scene summary in French of the RGALI promptbook, see Amiard-Chevrel, 132–6.
76. Bykov, 18.
77. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 171.
78. Act 2, Tableau 2, Scene 5, 36. In both texts, Harlequin and Columbine are in love but are thwarted by Columbine's father, Pantalone, who has a series of other potential candidates for her. After a series of adventures, the pantomime concludes with a magnificent pageant, complete with a magician in a tulip.
79. Summarized from Cheauré, 67. Her source is Rumnev, A. A., O pantomime: Teatr, kino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964)Google Scholar, 146 ff.
80. Koonen, Stranitsy zhizni, 258; quoted in Worrall, 33.
81. Rumnev, O pantomime, 146; quoted in Cheauré, 68.
82. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 171.
83. Act 4, Tableau 8, Scene 2, 70.
84. Koonen, Stranitsy zhizni, 257.
85. Markov, Pavel, “O Gofmane: K spektakle Printsessa Brambilla,” in O teatre, vol. 4: Dnevnik teatral'nogo kritika 1930–1976 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977), 63Google Scholar.
86. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 173.
87. Zhirmunskii, B., “Komediia chistoi radosti,” Liubov’ k trem apel'sinam: Zhurnal Doktorra Dappertutto 1 (1916): 86Google Scholar; quoted in Clayton, 60.
88. Zhirmunskii, 87; quoted in Clayton, 60–1.
89. Tairov, “Princess Brambilla Lecture,” 173.
90. Worrall, 34.
91. Westwood, J. N., Endurance and Endeavour: Russian History 1812–2001, 5th ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 280–1Google Scholar.
92. Bykov, 24–5. Bykov reproduces this text from Izvestiia in his unpublished memoir, but never provides the author, issue, or date.
93. See Koonen, Stranitsy zhizni, 217.
94. Ibid.
95. Bykov, 20.
96. Fitzpatrick, 146.
97. Koonen, Stranitsy zhizni, 247.
98. Tairov, Notes of a Director, 143.
99. Thomas Joseph Torda, “Alexander Tairov and the Scenic Artists of the Moscow Kamerny Theater, 1914–1935” (Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1977), 651–2.
100. See the works cited above and two recent studies: Egidio, Aurora, Aleksandr Tairov e il Kamernyj Teatr di Mosca, 1907–1922 (Rome: Bulzoni, 2005)Google Scholar; and Dasha Krijanskaia, “The Directing System of Alexander Tairov” (Ph.D. diss., Utrecht University, 2002).
101. Clayton, 108.
102. Krijanskaia, Dasha, “Alexander Tairov (1885–1950),” in Fifty Key Theatre Directors, ed. Mitter, Shomit and Shevtsova, Maria (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 37–41Google Scholar, at 37.
103. Markov, P. A. [Pavel Aleksandrovich], The Soviet Theatre (London: Victor Gollancz, 1934), 99–100Google Scholar.
104. Somewhat ironically, the Kamerny's 1933 production of Vishnevsky's Optimistic Tragedy defined the aesthetics of socialist realism.
105. Efros was so deeply convinced of Tairov's integral connection with his times that he began Kamernyi Teatr i ego khudozhniki by stating, “The history of the Kamerny Theatre is the history of my generation.” Efros, ix.
106. Worrall, 16.