Bolshoi Confidential

by Simon Morrison

  On Cesare Pugni, I referred to Ivor Guest, “Cesare Pugni: A Plea for Justice,” Dance Research 1, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 30–28; on Ludwig Minkus, Robert Ignatius Letellier, The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 5–59. Alexander Gorsky’s service record is preserved in RGALI f. 659, op. 3, yed. khr. 932. I also consulted E. Surits and E. Belova, eds., Baletmeyster A. A. Gorskiy: Materialï, vospominaniya, stat’i (St. Petersburg: Dmitriy Bulanin, 2000). RGIA f. 497, op. 8, d. 55, chronicles the 1901–05 shipments of the Don Quixote props from St. Petersburg to Moscow for Gorsky’s innovative production. On the Kingdom of the Shades: Lynn Garafola, “Russian Ballet in the Age of Petipa,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. Marion Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 156.

  The symbolism of Carl Fabergé Easter and spring eggs is discussed by Wortman, From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, 278–81; see also Imperial Eggs,” Fabergé, http://www.faberge.com­/news/49-imperia­leggs.aspx. Fifty such eggs were produced from 1885 to 1916, though not all of them survive. On Rasputin, I relied on Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin: The Untold Story (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 97–101 (boating accident), 103–04 (hemophilia and Rasputin’s attempts to treat it through hypnosis), 192 (cartoon of Rasputin with the tsarina), and 223–24 (Rasputin’s death).

  1 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 14480, ll. 2 ob.–3.

  2 Ibid., l. 3 ob.

  3 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 14548, l. 8.

  4 Ibid., l. 140 ob.

  5 Fact Sheet: La Vivandière,” Language of Dance Centre, 2010, http://www.lodc­.org/uploads/pdfs­/LaVivandiere.pdf.

  6 Tat’yana Belova, Bol’shoy teatr Rossii: Istoricheskaya stsena (Moscow: Novosti, 2011), 87.

  7 Ibid., 12.

  8 Wortman, From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, 44.

  9 [William Howard Russell], “Russia,” The Times, Saturday, September 20, 1856, 7. The lovely flaxen-haired princess was not a princess at all, but Countess Anna Daschkoff. Her daughter Catherine recalled her being “one of the loveliest women at the Russian Court, and at the coronation of Emperor Alexander II was considered the most beautiful among all those who attended it … She was radiantly beautiful, and, like all those whom the gods love, she was carried off young, dying in the full splendor of her youth and of her happiness, five days after my birth” (Princess Catherine Radziwill, My Recollections [London: Isbister & Company, 1904], 18 and 42). De Morny is the French statesman Charles Auguste Louis Joseph Demorny (1811–65).

  10 Richard Wortman, “The Coronation of Alexander III,” in Tchaikovsky and His World, ed. Leslie Kearney (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 278.

  11 Wortman, From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, 237.

  12 Ye. O. Vazem, Zapiski balerinï sanktpeterburgskogo Bol’shogo teatra, 1867–1884, ed. N. A. Shuvalov (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1937), 181. Reference is to the coloratura soprano Zoya Kochetova, who sang the part of Antonida in the opera.

  13 Ibid., 179; additional information in this paragraph from Wortman, “The Coronation of Alexander III,” 289–90.

  14 Unsigned, “Po povodu baleta A. N. Bogdanova,” Teatral’nïy mirok, February 9, 1885, 2.

  15 [F. B. Gridnin], “Khronika,” Teatr i zhizn’, January 21, 1885, 2.

  16 [F. B. Gridnin], “Novïy balet. ‘Prelesti gashisha ili ostrov roz’ A. N. Bogdanova,” Teatr i zhizn’, January 22, 1885, 1–2.

  17 RGIA f. 652, op. 1, d. 287, l. 1. The letter, dated May 11, 1885, is addressed to Ivan Vsevolozhsky.

  18 V. A. Telyakovsky, Nina Dimitrievitch, and Clement Crisp, Memoirs,” Dance Research 8, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 39.

  19 One of the directors of the Moscow Imperial Theaters, Evgeniy De Salias-Turnemir, balked at implementing reforms and resigned in 1882 after just two months on the job. His appeal for retirement is cast, in keeping with the nostalgic nature of Tsar Alexander III’s reign, in archaic eighteenth-century language. RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 24885, ll. 13 and 16.

  20 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25072, l. 29.

  21 RGIA f. 497, op. 18, d. 16, l. 3.

  22 RGIA f. 468, op. 13, d. 675, l. 5 ob.

  23 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25090, ll. 38–39. The investigation of the theft was extremely thorough (Vashkevich’s mother, a railroad switch operator, was interrogated, along with a woman in St. Petersburg with whom he corresponded), but he kept his job.

  24 RGALI f. 659, op. 1, yed. khr. 209, l. 1.

  25 A. P. Chekhov, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy i pisem, ed. S. D. Balukhatïy and V. P. Potemkin, 20 vols. (Moscow: Ogiz, 1944–51), 2: 370.

  26 Telyakovsky, “Memoirs,” 40. Alastair Macaulay observes that the ballet Nathalie, ou la laitière Suisse, which starred Marie Taglioni in the 1832 version choreographed by her father, remained in repertory in Russia, perhaps in part because audiences knew of the ballerina-milkmaid connection. Email communication, July 22, 2015.

  27 Chekhov, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy i pisem, 2: 370.

  28 Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 97. Wiley reports that additional “improvements” included “the introduction of special drama and singing classes; the publication of The Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters [Yezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov]; the founding of central libraries of music, theater, and production materials; the building of warehouses and other storage facilities; and the establishment of a photography studio within the imperial theaters.”

  29 Telyakovsky, “Memoirs,” 40.

  30 RGIA f. 652, op. 1, d. 523, l. 11.

  31 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25297, l. 38; 1883 telegram from Pchelnikov to Vsevolozhsky, in which Pchelnikov requests permission to use the spare rubles in the budget to retain several of the employees that he had earlier sacked, to keep them housed and fed.

  32 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25110, l. 2 (March 15, 1883) and ll. 5 ob.-6 (April 12, 1883). The quotations come from Vsevolozhsky to the minister of the court, Count Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov (1837–1916), an intimate of Tsar Alexander III. According to the minister’s head note on the April 12 letter, Vsevolozhsky’s argument for the survival of the Bolshoi Ballet was “granted by His Majesty” on April 20.

  33 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25074, l. 350 ob. The disparities between the earnings of the Bolshoi Opera and the Ballet are illustrated on ll. 315 ob.-316 of this file. In October of 1881, the seventeen Russian (as opposed to French or Italian) opera performances brought in 25,056 rubles and 85 kopecks, and the nine ballet performances 6,160 rubles and 30 kopecks. In October of 1882, the twelve Russian opera performances earned 21,772 rubles and 20 kopecks, and the thirteen ballet performances 7,093 rubles and 70 kopecks. The disparities increased in November of the two years.

  34 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25110, l. 3.

  35 Yu. A. Bakhrushin, Istoriya russkogo baleta (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1965), 166.

  36 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 25110, l. 42 (October 10, 1883; Vsevolozhsky to the minister of the court).

  37 Marius Petipa, Russian Ballet Master: The Memoirs of Marius Petipa, ed. Lillian Moore; trans. Helen Whittaker (London: Chameleon Press, 1958), 20.

  38 Ibid., 50.

  39 Ivor Guest, The Ballet of the Second Empire (London: Pitman, 1974), 170–71; my thanks to Alastair Macaulay for this reference, and for information in this paragraph and the next. Email communication, July 22, 2015.

  40 August Bournonville, My Theatre Life, trans. Patricia N. McAndrew (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1979), 582.

  41 Petipa, Russian Ballet Master, 50.

  42 Elizabeth Souritz, “Moscow vs Petersburg: The Ballet Master Alexis Bogdanov and Others,” http://harriman.columbia­.edu/files/harriman/International­%20Symposium%20of%20­Russian%20Ballet%20%­20Paper%20Souritz.pdf.

  43 Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 27.

  44 The music for the Paul Taglioni version, called Der Seeräuber, came from the quill of the Bohemian Wenzel Gährich, who wrote at least nine other ballet scores, including one on the popular subject of Don Quixote and a Christ
mastime ballet for children, along with two operas and two vaudevilles. See Carl Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Philipp Justus, Freiherr von Lebedur, Tonkünstler-Lexicon Berlin’s von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Berlin: L. Rauh, 1861), 178–79; my thanks to Bruce Brown for this reference. The music for the Mazilier version is by Adolph Adam, composer of Giselle; and that for the Perrot and Petipa versions is credited to Cesare Pugni, although he evidently felt free to paraphrase Adam. Music by Léo Delibes became part of the Adam-Pugni–based performing edition.

  45 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 16897, l. 48 (letter of November 27, 1858). Owing to the lack of precedent, ticket scalping was not illegal at the time. Of the rush for seats for Le corsaire, Verstovsky scorns the “hundreds of people desiring to cram themselves through the same hole,” adding that, “in any public place, jostling, and dirt, and complaints are unavoidable.”

  46 This and the previous quotations from RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 17600, ll. 99–100.

  47 Henry Schlesinger, The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 132 and 170–71.

  48 RGIA f. 497, op. 9, d. 1585, ll. 19–24 (information and quotations).

  49 RGIA f. 482, op. 3, d. 3, l. 202.

  50 Ibid., l. 137 ob.

  51 RGIA f 497, op. 1, d. 71 (“Vospominaniya E. P. Kavelinoy o teatral’noy zhizni Moskvï 1870 gg.”), l1. 1–14 (information and quotations in this paragraph and the following).

  52 Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, “Cesare Pugni, Marius Petipa and 19th-Century Ballet Music,” The Musical Times 147, no. 1895 (Summer 2006): 48

  53 He died on January 14, 1870.

  54 Edgecombe, “Cesare Pugni, Marius Petipa and 19th-Century Ballet Music,” 40.

  55 RGIA f. 659, op. 4, d. 1128, 1. 44 (memorandum from the Imperial Court to the Directorate of the Imperial Moscow Theaters, November 10, 1869).

  56 RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 3639, l. 7.

  57 Arthur Saint-Léon, Letters from a Ballet Master: The Correspondence of Arthur Saint-Léon, ed. Ivor Guest (London: Dance Books, 1981), 113 and 120; see also Letellier, The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus, 22–23.

  58 Roberto González Echevarría, Cervantes’ Don Quixote: A Casebook (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 67.

  59 Neteatral, “Teatral’naya khronika,” Vseobshchaya gazeta, December 16, 1869; quoted in V. Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr vtoroy polovinï XIX veka (Leningrad and Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1963), 250.

  60 RGIA f 497, op. 1, d. 71, l. 9.

  61 [Unsigned], Russkiye vedomosti, January 25, 1870, 3 (“Moskovskiye vedomosti”). The criticism “boiled” in Gerber’s heart. He felt underappreciated in Moscow, both by the press and by the bureaucrats running the Bolshoi, and on December 1, 1873, sent an impassioned letter of complaint to Gedeonov in St. Petersburg. His grievances included being passed over for awards, fines, and rudeness from the Italian musicians with whom he had to work—all despite improving the quality of the orchestra and putting the score library in order. “I do all that I can, Your Excellency, and if I had the happiness of serving under your personal direction, then I am sure that Your Excellency would award me the Stanislavsky Ribbon. But from these gentlemen, who understand and accomplish nothing, there is no hope even of a kind word, never mind awards” (RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 23344, l. 56 ob.).

  62 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 22660, l. 1.

  63 Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr vtoroy polovinï XIX veka, 255.

  64 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 24261, l. 7.

  65 I sought in vain to discover plot, dramatic interest, logical consistency, or anything which might remotely resemble sanity. And even if I were fortunate enough to come upon a trace of it in Petipa’s Don Quixote, the impression was immediately effaced by an unending and monotonous host of feats of bravura, all of which were rewarded with salvos of applause and curtain calls” (Bournonville, My Theatre Life, 581).

  66 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 22646, l. 2.

  67 RGIA f. 497, op. 2, d. 22036, ll. 1–19 (information and quotations in this and the preceding paragraphs). A report was also filed in 1869 about sparks flying from the smokestack leading from the steam room to the back of the theater. The pressure had been increased to fill the water tower needed for the bathing scene in the ballet Le roi Candaule and the fountain in The Little Humpbacked Horse. Firemen were summoned to the theater to “put out the smokestack,” but it continued smoldering.

  68 Bournonville, My Theatre Life, 585; he reports seeing one act each from Cinderella, Le diable à quatre, and The Little Humpbacked Horse.

  69 I refer to the biographies of David Brown and Anthony Holden, and to recent Russian-language commentaries. See, for broader context, Simon Morrison, “Waist-Deep: In the Mire of Russian and Western Debates About Tchaikovsky,” The Times Literary Supplement, May 1, 2015, 14–15.

  70 Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky Research, http://wiki.tchaikovsky­-research. net/wiki/Swan_Lake; letter of September 10, 1875.

  71 P. I. Chaykovskiy, Dnevniki 1873–1891 (St. Petersburg: EGO; Severnïy olen’, 1993), 198; http://wiki.tchaikovsky­-research.net/wiki/Letter_681 (December 7, 1877, to Sergey Taneyev). The “moment of absolute happiness came during a concert performance of Swan Lake in Prague on February 9, 1888.

  72 Alexander Poznansky, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York: Schirmer, 1999), 175; see also Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 40–41.

  73 Skromnïy nablyudatel’, “Nablyudeniya i zametki,” Russkiye vedomosti, February 26, 1877, 2; see also Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr vtoroy polovinï XIX veka, 199.

  74 Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletnïy teatr vtoroy polovinï XIX veka, 199; see also Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 55.

  75 The initial hope was that Tchaikovsky would compose the music, and he even signed a contract with the Moscow Imperial Theaters to do so. But the deadline expired without a single sketch being produced. Partly to make amends, Tchaikovsky accepted the commission for Swan Lake.

  76 RGALI f. 659, op. 3, yed. khr. 3065, l. 37; also Surits, “‘Lebedinoye ozero’ 1877 goda.”

  77 RGALI f. 659, op. 3, yed. khr. 3065, l. 35; also Surits, “‘Lebedinoye ozero’ 1877 goda.”

  78 N. D. Kashkin, Vospominaniya o P. I. Chaykovskom (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1954), 117. The composer received 400 rubles up front for the music, and then, upon submitting the first three acts to the Bolshoi on April 12, 1876, he requested the remaining 400 rubles due. The payment was “disbursed from the receipts for the first four performances of the ballet Swan Lake (accordingly, 100 rubles each evening)” (RGALI f. 659, op. 3, yed. khr. 3065, l. 36).

  79 Chaykovskiy, Lebedinoye ozero. Balet v 4-x deystviyakh. Postanovka v Moskovskom Bol’shom teatre 1875–1883, 9.

  80 Arlene Croce, “‘Swan Lake’ and Its Alternatives,” in Going to the Dance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 184.

  81 Chaykovskiy, Lebedinoye ozero. Balet v 4-x deystviyakh. Postanovka v Moskovskom Bol’shom teatre 1875–1883, 32.

  82 Kashkin, Vospominaniya o P. I. Chaykovskom, 119.

  83 Chaykovskiy, Lebedinoye ozero. Balet v 4-x deystviyakh. Postanovka v Moskovskom Bol’shom teatre 1875–1883, 87, 91.

  84 Alastair Macaulay, “‘Swan Lake’ Discoveries Allow for a Deeper Dive into its History,” New York Times, October 13, 2015.

  85 Chaykovskiy, Lebedinoye ozero. Balet v 4-x deystviyakh. Postanovka v Moskovskom Bol’shom teatre 1875–1883, 210.

  86 Nothing is known of his relationship with Hansen.

  87 N. Panovskiy, “Bol’shoy teatr,” Moskovskiye vedomosti, September 19, 1863, 3; see also Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 46. The critique of Karpakova is perhaps too strong. August Bournonville saw both her and Sobeshchanskaya perform a benefit in Moscow in 1874, and praised the “matchless staying power and unmistakable skill of [the] two ballerinas with the curious names” in his memoirs (My Theatre Life, 584).

  88 Mukhin, kniga o balete,” l. 255.

  89 Ibid.

  90 K. F. Val’ts, 65 let v teatre (Len
ingrad: Academia, 1928), 73–75 (information and quotations in this paragraph and the following); see also Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 47.

  91 U rampï, “Pochemu balet padayet? II.,” Russkiy listok, November 22, 1900, 3.

  92 Ibid.

  93 The standard formula was for the performer to receive one-half or one-quarter of the Bolshoi Theater box-office receipts, once the book-keeper had deducted expenses specific to the benefit and issued the performer a claim check for presentation to the cashier. Alternative arrangements, including advance payments, required approval from the minister of the court. Karpakova’s Swan Lake benefit earning is listed in RGALI f. 659, op. 4, yed. khr. 3508, l. 36.

  94 Later this dance was inserted into The Little Humpbacked Horse.

  95 P. I. Chaykovskiy, Perepiska s N. F. von-Mekk, ed. V. A. Zhdanov and N. T. Zhegin, 3 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: Academia, 1934–36), 2: 298 (letter of January 14–15, 1880, from Nadezhda von Mekk to Tchaikovsky).

  96 N. K[ashkin]., “Muzïkal’naya khronika,” Russkiye vedomosti, March 3, 1877, 1.

  97 Quotations in this paragraph and the next from Zub’, “Bol’shoy teatr. Benefis g-zhi Karpakoy 1-oy—‘Lebedinoye ozero,’ balet Reyzingera, muzïka Chaykovskogo,” Sovremennïye izvestiya, February 26, 1877, 1.