Bolshoi Confidential

by Simon Morrison

  6 Swift, A Loftier Flight, 136.

  7 Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), 255.

  8 Ibid; Roland John Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet: Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1810–1910 (Alton: Dance Books, 2007), 6.

  9 Yu. A. Bakhrushin, Istoriya russkogo baleta (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1965), 47.

  10 Swift, A Loftier Flight, 112.

  11 Val’berkh, Iz arkhiva baletmeystera, 166 (from the preface to the libretto of Valberg’s fantastic ballet The Amazonians, or Destruction of the Magic Castle [Amazonki, ili razrusheniye volshebnogo zamka, 1815]).

  12 Ibid., 36.

  13 Zamoyski, Moscow 1812, 229.

  14 Tolstoy, War and Peace, 875.

  15 Zamoyski, Moscow 1812, 241–42.

  16 Glushkovskiy, Vospominaniya baletmeystera, 115–16.

  17 Ibid., 121.

  18 This quotation and the following from Glushkovskiy, Vospominaniya baletmeystera, 102–10, and RGALI f. 634, op. 1, yed. khr. 535, ll. 19–30.

  19 Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet, 20–21.

  20 This quotation and the following from RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 879, ll. 1 ob., 19.

  21 Destruction of the Imperial Theatre, Moscow, by Fire,” the Illustrated London News, July 2, 1853, 525.

  22 This and the following quotations and information concerning the fire and its aftermath from Moskovskiye vedomosti no. 5, v subboty, yanvarya 17 dnya, 1825 goda [Saturday, January 17, 1825], 141. Besides general advertisements for upcoming productions, Moskovskiye vedomosti did not report at length on the Bolshoi Petrovsky Theater in the years ahead. Performances in the theater and elsewhere in Moscow by foreign artists received modest, sometimes hostile attention. An 1836 arrival of a Spanish dance troupe was denounced in advance by Prince Pyotr Shalikov, a dependably xenophobic contributor to the newspaper: “The 14th of this month features a benefit for the Iberian pupils of Terpsichore, who—alas!—are no longer content entertaining their compatriots, devotees of the goddess of discord” (Moskovskiye vedomosti no. 1, v sredy, yanvarya 1 dnya, 1836 goda [Wednesday, January 1, 1836], 22).

  23 Mikhaíl Lermontov, “Panorama Moskvï,” in Sobraniye sochineniy v chetïryokh tomakh (Moscow: Pravda, 1969), http://lib.ru/LITRA/LERM ­ONTOW/s_moscow.txt_with-­big-pictures.html.

  24 Moskovskiye vedomosti no. 5, v subbotu, yanvarya 3 dnya, 1825 [Saturday, January 3, 1825], 11. Tickets for the opening performance and masquerade ranged from 50 kopecks for the “second side gallery” to 15 rubles for a “loge in the stalls.”

  25 B. L. Modzalevskiy, “Avtobiografiya kompozitora Verstovskogo,” Biryuch Petrogradskikh gosudarstvennïkh akademicheskikh teatrov 2 (1920): 231.

  26 RGIA f. 652, op. 1, d. 64, l. 49. This letter, from September 21, 1838, and most of the other letters in the file are addressed to Nikita Vsevolozhsky (1799–1862), a rich theatrical producer and the founder and host of the Green Lamp writers’ club, which was frequented by Pushkin.

  27 Ibid., l. 27 (received June 6, 1838).

  28 Ibid., l. 19 (received March 8, 1838).

  29 Ibid., l. 49.

  30 Ibid., ll. 43–44 (received November 16, 1838).

  31 Ibid., l. 42 (undated).

  32 Ibid., l. 44.

  33 Ibid., l. 8 (December 28, 1837).

  34 This and the following quotations and information from RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 9191, ll. 1–10. Gedeonov’s report is dated April 10, 1842; it incorporates the notes of the Imperial Theater College doctor, A. Ostrogozhsky, which are dated March 21, 1842.

  35 K. F. Val’ts, 65 let v teatre (Leningrad: Academia, 1928), 28.

  36 RGALI f. 497, op. 1, d. 10996, l. 59 (November 16, 1846, letter from Ivan Naumov to Gedeonov).

  37 Vl. V. Protopopov, “Stat’i muzïkal’nogo kritika ‘N. Z.,’” in Muzïkal’noye nasledstvo: Sborniki po istorii muzïkal’noy kul’turï SSSR, vol. 1, ed. G. B. Bernardt, V. A. Kiselyov, M. S. Pekelis (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1962), 315 (letter from Verstovsky to the historian and publicist Mikhaíl Pogodin).

  38 Val’ts, 65 let v teatre, 26.

  3: FLEET AS LIGHTNING

  The statute of the Censorship Committee of the Ministry of Education is available at http://www.ope­ntextnn.ru/censorship/russia/dorev­/law/1804/. The tale of Tsar Nicholas I ordering the dancers of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters to be “taught to handle sabers” is told by Edvard Radzinsky in Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 38; on the imperial ballet being a harem, 239. The fact that the ballet in question, The Revolt of the Harem, is pro-feminist seems not to have made an impression, at least not a positive one, on the sovereign. See Joellen A. Meglin, “Feminism or Fetishism? La Révolte des femmes and Women’s Liberation in France in the 1830s,” in Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet, ed. Lynn Garafola (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), 69–90. For Marie Taglioni’s and Fanny Elssler’s reception in Russia I relied on Roland John Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet: Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1810–1910 (Alton: Dance Books, 2007), 81–89 and 173–77; the tale of her satin shoes being dined upon comes from K. A. Skal’kovskiy by way of Aleksander Pleshcheyev, Nash balet (1673–1896): Balet v Rossii do nachala XIX stoletiya i balet v S.-Peterburge do 1896 goda (St. Petersburg: A. Benke, 1896), 109. Pages 130–31 of this book describe the excitement occasioned by Ekaterina Sankovskaya’s September 16, 1846, performance in St. Petersburg of La sylphide. The details of her contracts, salaries, and health problems are from the lichnoye delo preserved in RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 1298. I also relied on D[mitriy] I[vanovich] Mukhin’s chronicle of Sankovskaya’s career in his “kniga o baleta,” Muzey Bakhrushina f. 181, no. 1, ll. 118–78.

  Luisa Weiss’s 1845–47 engagements with the Moscow Imperial Theaters are described in RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 10616; RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 11478, l. 1, recounts the March 15, 1847, robbery in her apartment. The date of the installation of gas lighting in the theater is given in K. F. Val’ts, 65 let v teatre (Leningrad: Academia, 1928), 36–37; the point about Severnaya pchela being the first newspaper permitted to publish reviews is from O. Petrov, Russkaya baletnaya kritika kontsa XVIII—pervoy polovinï XIX veka (Moscow: Iskusstva, 1982), 66; RGIA f. 780, op. 2, d. 66, ll. 1–3, gives a sense of the rules governing review-writing, as of 1848. For the comparison of Andreyanova and Sankovskaya, I drew on a January 4, 1845, article in Literaturnaya gazeta, reproduced in ibid., 226–28. Petrov also includes the November 26, 1949, article in Moskovskiye vedomosti that vaguely mentions Sankovskaya’s foreign appearances: “Not only Moscow, but also Paris, Hamburg, and many other European cities were deafened with applause when she inspired them with her art, placing her in the company of famous ballerinas” (ibid., 246). On prostitution: “Three Centuries of Russian Prostitution,” pravda.ru, April 30, 2004, http://www.pravdarepo­rt.com/news/society/sex/30­-04-2002/42121-0/.

  The case of Avdotya Arshinina is discussed in detail by the lawyer Aleksandr Lyubavskiy in Russkiye ugolovnïye protsessï, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaya Pol’za, 1867), 193–222. A feuilleton published in the newspaper Moskovskiy gorodskoy listok reimagined the events at the masquerade that preceded her molestation while also cruelly mocking the poor girl’s low-class French. To get around the censors, Avdotya is renamed Anyuta in the feuilleton, which is in and of itself a nasty reference to morose folk songs about lost or ill-fated love, such as that sung by the peasant heroine Anyuta in the popular comic opera The Miller Who Was Also a Magician, a Swindler, and a Matchmaker: “Through my entire youth / After all, I’ve seen no joy.” The feuilleton reads: “Masquerade at the theater. Female Domino: Lesse mua, musye’ [Laisse moi, monsieur]. Moustache: No, no, beautiful mask, I won’t leave you.’ F. D., running off, says to herself: ‘He’s drunk.’ Moustache, catching her: ‘I love you. We’re leaving.’ F. D. to Moustache: Lesse, lesse mua.’ To a distinguished gentleman: Come to my aid, sir.’ Gentleman: Anyuta,
is that you?’” (Moskovskiy gorodskoy listok, January 9, 1847, 26). The case seems later to have inspired pulp fiction. The plot of “Red Mask” (Krasnaya maska), a Nat Pinkerton detective tale from 1909, approximates Arshinina’s circumstances. See http://az.lib.­ru/r/razwlecheni­eizdatelxstwo/text_132_kra­snaya_maska.shtml.

  The official reports about the destruction by fire of the Bolshoi Petrovsky Theater are in RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 14484.

  1 Quoted in Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet, 83–84.

  2 Meaning rubles pegged to the value of silver.

  3 In one spectacular trick, attributed to the dancer Amalia Brugnoli, dancers blithely hiked themselves onto the tips of their toes and perched there for all to see: toe dancing”; Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), 138.

  4 RGALI f. 2579, op. 1, yed. khr. 1567, l. 165. Vasiliy Fyodorov gathered some eight hundred black-and-white photographs of Bolshoi performances and personnel. The two albums are in such brittle condition that even the employees of RGALI are cautioned against cracking them open. The collection has been microfilmed and partially published (V. V. Fyodorov, Repertuar Bol’shogo Teatra SSSR, 1776–1955, 2 vols. [New York: Norman Ross, 2001]), but nothing substitutes for a perusal of the original. The first album includes a painting of the Petrovsky Theater, torchlights denying the pitch-black of central Moscow in 1780, carriages snaking into view from the bottom of the frame. There are also designs for the ballets staged in Moscow by Marius Petipa, who gifted the French ballet tradition to Russia during his decades as second and first maître de ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters.

  5 Nataliya Chernova, “V moskovskom balete shchepkinskoy porï,” Sovetskiy balet 4 (1989): 35.

  6 S. T. Aksakov, Sobraniye sochineniy, 4 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoy literaturï, 1955–56), 3: 538; also quoted in V. M. Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr ot vozniknoveniya do seredinï XIX veka (St. Petersburg: Lan’, 2008), 346. The title of the ballet was The Young Milkmaid, or Nisetta and Luke (Molodaya molochnitsa, ili Nisetta i Luka). It was first performed in St. Petersburg in 1817.

  7 RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 1298, l. 64.

  8 Petrov, Russkaya baletnaya kritika kontsa XVIII—pervoy polovinï XIX veka, 152.

  9 Ibid.

  10 RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 1298, l. 64.

  11 Ibid., l. 5; also quoted in Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr ot vozniknoveniya do seredinï XIX veka, 347.

  12 RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 1298, l. 44; Muzey Bakhrushina f. 486, no. 124520/13.

  13 Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet, 154–55.

  14 Adapted from the 1833 Taglioni vehicle La Révolte au sérail.

  15 Marius Petipa, Russian Ballet Master: The Memoirs of Marius Petipa, ed. Lillian Moore; trans. Helen Whittaker (London: Chameleon Press, 1958), 46–47.

  16 Mukhin, kniga o balete,” l. 178 (quoting Moskovkiye vedomosti).

  17 Chernova, “V moskovskom balete shchepkinskoy porï,” 36.

  18 Information and quotations from the article, in this and the following paragraphs, from the copy held in RGALI f. 191, op.1, yed. khr. 2005.

  19 Petrov, Russkaya baletnaya kritika kontsa XVIII—pervoy polovinï XIX veka, 164.

  20 Ann Hutchinson Guest and Knud Arne Jurgensen, Robert le diable: The Ballet of the Nuns (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1997), 6.

  21 Petrov, Russkaya baletnaya kritika kontsa XVIII—pervoy polovinï XIX veka, 157 (Vissarion Belinsky in Moskovskiy nablyudatel’).

  22 Baletmeyster Gerino,” Moskovskiye vedomosti no. 99, v subbotu, dekabrya 10 dnya, 1838 [Saturday, December 10, 1838], 796.

  23 RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 6378, l. 21 (letter of October 9, 1838, from Mikhaíl Zagoskin to Gedeonov).

  24 Petrov, Russkaya baletnaya kritika kontsa XVIII—pervoy polovinï XIX veka, 157–59 (Moskovskiy nablyudatel’ and Severnaya pchela.)

  25 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 9262, ll. 10ob.–11. Alexandra Sankovskaya’s complaint against Guerinot is dated December 3, 1842, and included in l. 4 of this file. The matter was settled by December 29.

  26 Letter of December 19, 1843, in “Perepiska A. N. Verstovskago s A. M. Gedenovïm,” Yezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov 2 (1913): 48; also quoted in Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr ot vozniknoveniya do seredinï XIX veka, 359.

  27 RGIA f. 678, op. 1, d. 1017, l. 13.

  28 RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 10618, l. 10 (verso). This and the following quotations from a twenty-six-page file titled “O proisshestvii pri Moskovskikh Teatrakh 29 ch. oktyabrya 1845” (Regarding the occurrence in the Moscow Theaters on October 29, 1845).

  29 Ibid., l. 11.

  30 Ibid., l. 11 (verso).

  31 Ibid., l. 14 (verso).

  32 Ibid.

  33 Ibid., l. 16 (verso).

  34 RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 10628, l. 64 (undated).

  35 Quoted in Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr ot vozniknoveniya do seredinï XIX veka, 326.

  36 Letter of December 19, 1843, in “Perepiska A. N. Verstovskago s A. M. Gedenovïm,” Yezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov 2 (1913): 47–48.

  37 Alexander V. Tselebrovski, “The History of the Russian Vaudeville from 1800–1850” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2003), 260.

  38 Information and quotations in this and the previous paragraph from M. I. Pïlyayev, Zamechatel’nïye chudaki i originalï (St. Petersburg: Izdaniye A. S. Suvorina, 1898), 313–15; the tale is also told by Mukhin, “kniga o balete,” l. 154 ob., and Petipa, Russian Ballet Master, 27–30.

  39 Petipa, Russian Ballet Master, 28.

  40 The sentiment, dated September 22, 1898, of the poet, translator, and actor Dmitri Lensky; Muzey Bakhrushina f. 143, no. 148024. Lensky altered the text, changing the last word, “sins” (grekhi), into “fleas” (blokhi), turning it into a joke of sorts about Sankovskaya’s flea-like jumping abilities. He might also be aligning “sylphide” with syphilis.”

  41 RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 11475, l. 4.

  42 RGIA f. 1297, op. 27, d. 750, l. 7.

  43 Ibid., l. 13.

  44 Ibid., l. 8.

  45 Ibid., l. 14.

  46 Ibid., l. 16.

  47 RGIA f. 497, op. 1, d. 11475, l. 92.

  48 RGIA f. 1297, op. 27, d. 750, l. 55.

  49 Chernova, “V moskovskom balete shchepkinskoy porï,” 33.

  50 This and the following quotations from Muzey Bakhrushina f. 156, no. 73844, ll.1–2; the letter, which does not bear a date, is also quoted in Chernova, “V moskovskom balete shchepkinskoy porï,” 35–36.

  51 This and the following quotations from “Destruction of the Imperial Theatre, Moscow, by Fire.”

  4: IMPERIALISM

  Following Verstovsky’s retirement, the directorship of the Moscow Imperial Theaters changed frequently, passing from one often inadequate or indifferent nobleman to another: Leonid Lvov (L’vov) lasted from 1862 to 1864 in the post; Vasiliy Nekhlyudov from 1864 to 1866; Nikolay Pelt (Pel’t) from 1866 to 1872; Pavel Kavelin from 1872 to 1876; Laventiy Auber (Ober) from 1876 to 1881; Vladimir Begichev from October of 1881 to May of 1882; and, for just two months after that, Yevgeniy De Salias-Turnemir. The situation stabilized under Pavel Pchelnikov, who served from 1882 to 1898. For two years, 1886–88, Pchelnikov reported in Moscow to the censorship-board chairman Apollon Maykov, who, like the repertoire inspector Ostrovsky, sought to remove the lesser-skilled ballet master Bogdanov from the Bolshoi. Pchelnikov, however, defended Bogdanov, which allowed him to hang on to his job until 1889. The tsar, Alexander III, was in on the intrigue, to Bogdanov’s disadvantage.

  Vladimir Telyakovsky took over the directorship of the Moscow Imperial Theaters from 1898 to 1901. Like his predecessors in the post, he served at the pleasure of the powerful intendants of the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg: High Chamberlain Andrey Saburov, who served from 1858 to 1862; Count Alexander Borkh (von der Borch, 1862–67); Stepan Gedeonov (the son of Alexander Gedeonov and the former director of the Hermitage Museum, 18
67–75); Baron Karl Kister (former account manager for the minister of the court, 1875–81); the Francophile diplomat but Russophile theatrical reformer Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1881–99); and Prince Sergey Volkonsky (Wolkonsky, 1899–1901).

  Alberto Cavos’s life and times are recounted by his grandson Aleksandr Benue (Alexandre Benois) in Moi vospominaniya v pyati knigakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 36–40. The smoking ban is described in RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 15906. The gas war involving Makar Shishko is described in RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 19317, which contains the Moscow Imperial Theaters incident reports for the year 1863; the arson and sugar bribe cases are in f. 497, op. 2, d. 25074, ll. 239, 414. The contracts for the French mechanic (Vaudoré) are detailed in f. 497, op. 2, d. 19321; those for Mikhaíl Arnold in d. 19322. RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25120, describes the prohibition of excessive encores (more than three); and d. 25489 gives a sample list of the kinds of expenses deducted from benefit receipts. On Mademoiselle Rachel and the jennet: f. 497, op. 2, d. 14472.

  On the coronations of the nineteenth-century tsars, I relied on the impeccable scholarship of Richard S. Wortman, From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, vol. 2 of Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995–2000), 19–57, 212–70, and 340–64. I also consulted the chronicle of imperial Russia in Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, 3 vols. (New York: Penguin Press, 2014–), 1: 56–60 (Tsar Alexander II’s reforms), 61–62 (okhranka), and 66–67 (Crimean and Russo-Ottoman Wars).

  My thanks to Sergey Konayev for his invaluable help with Swan Lake and its contexts, and for providing me with an advance copy of his edition of the original violin rehearsal score: P. I. Chaykovskiy, Lebedinoye ozero. Balet v 4-x deystviyakh. Postanovka v Moskovskom Bol’shom teatre 1875–1883. Skripichnïy repetitor i drugiye dokumentï, ed. and comp. Sergey Konayev and Boris Mukosey (St. Petersburg: Kompozitor, 2015). Thanks as well to Roland John Wiley for information related to Don Quixote; email communication, November 10–20, 2014. I drew in this chapter from his Tchaikovsky’s Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1985), 25–62, 92–102, and 242–74; The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov: Choreographer of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1997), 170–83; and Tchaikovsky (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 100–102, 134–37, 369–71, and 413–17. I also benefited from Elizaveta Surits, “‘Lebedinoye ozero’ 1877 goda,” http://www.ballet­.classical.ru­/surits.html; and Selma Jeanne Cohen, “The Problems of Swan Lake, in Next Week, Swan Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1982), 1–18.