Producer Serge Diaghilev and directors Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold dominated Russian theatrical life in the first decades of the 20th century. Together with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavsky founded the Moscow Art Theatre (later called the Moscow Academic Art Theatre) in 1898. Stanislavsky’s insistence on historical accuracy, exact realism, and intense psychological preparation by his actors led to a string of successful productions from the beginning of the century into the 1930s. The theatre was known particularly for its productions of Chekhov’s plays, including The Seagull (1896), the hit of the theatre’s inaugural season sarana99.
Meyerhold was one of Stanislavsky’s actors, but he broke with his master’s insistence on realism. He welcomed the Russian Revolution and put his considerable talent and energy into creating a new theatre for the new state. Throughout the 1920s and into the ’30s, he staged brilliant, inventive productions, both of contemporary drama and of the classics. However, his iconoclastic style fell out of favour in the 1930s, and he was arrested and executed in 1940.
Diaghilev was a brilliant organizer and impresario whose innovative Ballets Russes premiered many of the most significant ballets of the first quarter of the century. Although the legendary company was based primarily in Paris, Diaghilev employed major Russian composers (particularly Stravinsky), artists (e.g., Alexandre Benois, Natalya Goncharova, and Mikhail Larionov), and dancers (including Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina) sarana99.
Ballet enjoyed great success in the Soviet period, not because of any innovations but because the great troupes of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Theatre in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) were able to preserve the traditions of classical dance that had been perfected prior to 1917. The Soviet Union’s choreography schools produced one internationally famous star after another, including the incomparable Maya Plisetskaya, Rudolf Nureyev (who defected in 1961), and Mikhail Baryshnikov (who defected in 1974).
Another extremely successful area of theatrical performance was puppet theatre. The Obraztsov Puppet Theatre (formerly the State Central Puppet Theatre), founded in Moscow by Sergey Obraztsov, continues to give delightful performances for patrons of all ages. The same can be said for the spectacular presentations of the Moscow State Circus, which has performed throughout the world to great acclaim. Using since 1971 a larger building and renamed the Great Moscow State Circus, it excelled even in the darkest of the Cold War years sarana99.
Theatrical life in post-Soviet Russia has continued to thrive. The Moscow and St. Petersburg theatres have maintained their leading position, but they have been joined by hundreds of theatres throughout the country. Liberated from state censorship, the theatres have experimented with bold and innovative techniques and subject matter. The repertoire of the theatres experienced a shift away from political topics and toward classical and psychological themes. Since the late 1990s the Bolshoi Theatre’s dominance has been challenged by the Novaya (New) Opera Theatre in Moscow. Among other successful theatres in Moscow are the Luna Theater, Arbat-Opera, Moscow City Opera, and the Helikon-Opera sarana99. (For further discussion, see theatre, Western and dance, Western.)
