THE LAST ROMANTICIST OF
RUSSIAN THEATRE
tribute to Oleg Yefremov
By Y. Kislyarova
May 24 marked the anniversary of the death of the outstanding Russian
theatre director and actor Oleg Yefremov.
Yefremov symbolizes a whole epoch in the history of national theatre.
He is rightfully considered to be the soul and mouthpiece of his generation,
expressing its hopes and disappointments. In the middle of the 50s, three
years after the death of 
Jozeph
Stalin, Yefremov set up Sovremennik that immediately became one of Russia's
most popular theatres. A graduate of the drama school of the Moscow Art
Theatre, he was an uncompromising adherent and fervent supporter of its
traditions. Once, still a student, he swore on his blood that he would
remain faithful to the Stanislavsky teaching. As it turned out later, this
romantic gesture wasn't epatage. Shortly before his death he told the Voice
of Russia: "It's a great mistake to treat Stanislavsky as a museum
value. The main thing in his system is constant and on-going evolution".
Yefremov made a successful career in the movies as well. His movie heroes,
ranging from intellectuals to workers, yet invariably charming and amusing,
won him nationwide love. But his heart was always with the theatre. At
the age of 43 Yefremov took up the post of artistic director of the Moscow
Art Theatre. The new job best-suited his reformist nature. Since his first
days in office until his death he had been struggling to revive the principles
introduced by the Art Theatre's founders Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Yefremov was an active participant in all major events concerning the theatre
and a member of the 3d World Theatre Olympiad's organizing committee. The
well-known Russian actor Sergei Yursky recalls: "Yefremov was a very
energetic, yet very romantic person, so romantic that he seems to belong
to a more distant past. He is one of the most remarkable figures of the
20th century".
A year after his death domestic and foreign theatre personalities gathered
in Lyubimovka, historically linked with Konstantin Stanislavsky and Anton
Chekhov, to plant a cherry orchard - one of Yefremov's last initiatives.
The Cherry Orchard written by Chekhov and first staged by Stanislavsky
remains one of the most popular plays in Russia and abroad .
THE PAST AND PRESENT OF
THE SOLOVKI MONASTERY
By Milena Faustova
The Russian Culture Ministry has worked out a program for the protection
and maintenance of the historical, cultural, architectural and religious
compound in Solovki, north-western Russia. The Solovki monastery was set
up by Orthodox Saints Zosima and Savvaty on remote islands off the White
Sea in the first half of the 15th century.
The
well-known Russian painter Mikhail Nesterov once said a bout the Solovki
monastery: "Don't be afraid of Solovki, there you are closer to Christ".
Numerous white-stone churches scattered across the Solovki archipelago
look like a fortress with their own inhabitants and rules. The place is
famous for its labyrinths and burial mounds dating from ancient times.
Similar relics of northern civilizations can be found in north-eastern
Scandinavia and on the Cola peninsula. Whereas in Filand, Sweden and Norway
most of them were destroyed during the christianization period, the Solovki
shrines have survived till nowadays. The Solovki monastery went down in
history as an unshakeable stronghold of Orthodox Christianity. Due to its
remote position, it enjoyed relative independence from Moscow Patriarchs.
Solovki monks would often engage in bitter theological disputes with top
church officials. In the 17th century the cloister rebelled against the
so-called renewal of Orthodoxy and rejected the amended church-books brought
from the mainland. Seeing that nothing could persuade the monks to accept
the new rules, the then Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich threatened to
confiscate the monastery's mainland property. The monks replied that they
would rather die than renounce their faith. For 8 years afterwards tsarist
troops besieged the monastery and finally captured it.
The 20th century proved the hardest for the remote northern cloister.
World War I, a stirring-up of atheistic elements, the Bolshevik revolution...
In the 1920s the monastery was closed and turned into a camp for political
prisoners. Its inmates totaled about 30 thousand, most of them former officers,
noblemen, representatives of the intelligentsia, members of opposition
parties and the clergy. Solovki became the last abode for the outstanding
Russian philosopher, mathematician, chemist and priest Pavel Florensky
and for scores of other prominent scholars, historians, writers and musicians.
The well-known philologist, historian and culturologist, Academician Dmitry
Likhachev spent several years at the Solovki camp. "What did I learn
in Solovki? First of all, I understood that every man is human", Likhachev
wrote in one of his latest books titled "Reminiscences". "Many
a time criminals, those who are commonly despised by society, saved my
life". Likhachev died in 1999, 60 years after the camp's closure.
It was not until the early 70s that the Soviet government proclaimed
the Solovki archipelago a nature preserve. In 1990 the Russian Church Assembly
passed a decision to restore the Solovki monastery. The project receives
much attention from the government, in particular the Ministry of Culture,
running a special aid and development program for Solovki .
METAMOPHOSES OF PAPER
An exhibition at the Museum of Private Collections
by I. Beratova
The Moscow Museum of Private Collections has launched an exhibition
entitled "Metamorphoses of Paper".
People invented paper back in the 2nd century in China. Since then
it has been one of the main carriers of civilization: philosophic works,
fiction, scientific papers, architectural designs, and technical inventions
- have all been kept in the 
storehouse
of world culture thanks to paper. The phrase "paper will bear everything"
is known to everybody. Indeed, for all its fragility, paper is durable,
and probably that is why 20th-century artists treated it with particular
respect. There are a great number of ways to use paper. Flat paper can
transform into dimensional objects. People use paper to make relief objects,
sculptures, masks, ornamentation, or even create a whole world. For example,
artist Pyotr Perevezentsev invented a myth about the civilization of a
mysterious ancient country "Kopysa" and devoted several projects
to it. Kopysa is a world that came to ruination because of its over-complicated
structure, a world that suffocated in paper mazes. Every resident of Kopysa
wears a mask. There is the order of wearing these masks, established by
calendar regulations. The imagined Kopysa calendar was presented at an
exhibition of work by another admirer of "paper myths", artist
Sergei Yakunin. "The calendar reflects the wish of every person to
shape and regulate his life," says the artist. "In their divine
origin, humans disappear in eternity, where they have no faces. While here,
on earth, where our way is measured by calendars, we change every day both
physically and spiritually. We present various faces. Therefore, my calendar
is made of masks. It's a short section of our earthly way."
Unlike Sergei Yakunin, who has a bent for philosophic ideas in work,
artist Marina Kastalskaya is more interested in paper as valuable material.
"This material offers opportunities for any project," says the
artist. "For me, the Japanese term 'vabih' means a lot. It implies
roughness of the material but at the same time, its sensuality and sophistication.
In my work I want to reconcile these two opposites."
Artists
are interested not only in paper as finished product but also in the process
of its manufacture. Valery Orlov was the first artist in this country to
think of the technology of producing paper as an artistic act. Orlov insists
that every hand-cast sheet of paper is one in its kind and even has specific
properties, which it acquires in the process of casting. This way of producing
paper is a kind of the artist's protest against the dominance of modern
technologies. "Shortly we may stop having traditional photography.
It will be replaced by prints, which do not have the visual density of
photographs. Everything is becoming a synthetic product." Nevertheless
artists believe that the computer screen and virtual reality will never
make up for hand-made works, for the delight of working with paper, with
its unique properties - its thinness or density, smoothness or roughness.
The display, which covers nearly the entire 20th century, beginning
with avant-garde of the 1910s, has many surprises in store for visitors.
For one, Nikita Rodionov's sculptural group "Yalta Conference"
depicting the three leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition - Churchill, Stalin
and Roosevelt - during their historic meeting at Yalta at the end of World
War II. Or paper cuttings by the "scissors virtuosos" Yelizaveta
Kruglikova and Vadim Faliev. This technique was fashionable in Russia in
the early 20th century as a feature of the theater of shadows. Theater
cannot do without paper, which can imitate anything - stone, metal, wood.
But the most surprising about paper is that it can stand simultaneously
for ephemeral and eternal things. As a prophesy come the words written
by the early 20th-century futurist poet Alexis Kruchyonykh on paper compositions
by avant-garde artist Pyotr Miturich: "The world will die, but we
are eternal" .
MUSIC IN A CHERRY WOOD
New international music festival
By N. Yakhontova
Moscow has welcomed a new annual international music festival entitled
"Cherry Wood".
On May 23-29 the hall of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts hosted the
concerts of the festival. Guests were greeted at the entrance and offered
ripe cherries, sweets and champagne. The festival brought together such
classical music stars as the Moscow-based pianist Mikhail Pletnyov and
conductor Pavel Kogan, the Lithuanian conductor Saulus Sondeckis, American
pianist Julia Zilberquit, young Russian tenor Dmitry Korchak, and celebrated
viola player Yuri Bashmet.
What is the Cherry Wood Festival? The author of the idea and organizer
Alexander Krauter says: "'Cheery Wood' is the literal translation
from Italian of the name of a Russian company selling Italian clothes.
Staffers are all Russians, except for invited managers, who are Italians,
Germans and Frenchmen. It's a large Moscow-based company, whose president,
Mikhail Kusnirovich, is an imaginative person. He and I decided to launch
a prestigious music festival. The idea was mine, the title his."
At 35, Alexander Krauter has extensive professional experience. He
has college degrees in music and economics. For six years he has been director
of the symphony orchestra under the baton of Pavel Kogan. He is also a
producer, impresario, and manager, with extensive connections in the world
of music. Once the idea of a new festival evolved, it was enthusiastically
supported by several top-class musicians. And not only musicians. The Board
of Trustees includes the famous movie actor Oleg Yankovsky, chief producer
of the Moscow Sovremennik Theater, Galina Volchek, clothes designer Vyacheslav
Zaitsev, writer Edward Radzinsky, and other prominent artists.
Every year Moscow, let alone the whole of Russia, hosts a great number
of festivals, each being interesting in its own way. What kind of event
will the new festival be? "The romantic name dictates a special kind
of relations with performers," says Alexander Krauter. "Small
wonder, Mikhail Pletnyov said he had not received such a professional reception
anywhere else in Russia. We do try to work in the best traditions of western
impresarios. We spent a whole week looking for a grand piano that Mikhail
Pletnyov would settle for. Organizers must have a certain prestige. Then
the fine terms will ensure a fine makeup of performers."
One feels like describing the festival as an elite event: it boasts
star-performers and an unusual atmosphere, even the cherries for the public
were delivered at a special request by plane from the south of the country.
The luxurious hall under a glass roof is airy and festive. Next to it is
a cozy restaurant. And what about your audiences?
"Our audiences include people from all walks of life, but mostly
members of the intelligentsia," says Alexander Krauter. "Statesmen
and artists also come to our concerts and simply lovers of music, of course.
If there are people who haven't managed to get a ticket, and usually there
are many such people at every concert, we let them in for free and arrange
additional chairs for them. We don't need to earn money, we get enough
money from sponsors. One of the sponsors is the Daimler-Kreisler Company."
The design of the concerts is done by an artist with musical education.
Not accidentally, the manager of the festival, Yevgenia Khlynova, described
it in this way: "I believe, it's a festival of the future. Our invitation
to contribute to it next year has been responded by several celebrated
performers. Given our desire and ability to work, the festival will most
certainly gain in stature."
5 June 2001
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