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CHEKHOV FESTIVAL: DIRECTOR ROBERT STURUA
The Holy Trinity and St. Sergius Lavra
THE FABERGE FOUNDATION: IN SEARCH OF LOST TREASURES

CHEKHOV FESTIVAL: DIRECTOR ROBERT STURUA

By Olga Rusanova

Moscow is a city of theaters. One always feels it. And today, when the Russian capital is hosting the 3rd International Chekhov festival, we clearly see that Moscow is one of the world's biggest theater capitals. The two-months-long Chekhov marathon is a parade of world celebrities and their sensational performances. Last week the well-known Shota Rustaveli Drama Theater from Tbilisi presented its plays. Its artistic director Robert Sturua is familiar to theater-goers in many countries. The 60-year-old master has won many awards and staged a lot of triumphal performances.

His best works - Shakespeare's "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Richard III" - grace different stages in the world. At the Chekhov festival the Rustaveli Theater showed "Lamara" - an important play touching upon many problems faced by Georgia, ethnic among them. It's a combination of drama, tale and parable. The heroine is a girl from Chechnya, Lamara. Two brothers, ethnic Georgians, are in love with her. They abduct her, and this triggers a bloody squabble between Georgians and Chechens. This is one side of the plot. And the other is the following: one of the brothers has extrasensory perceptions; he understands the language of birds. His gift is beneficial to people. But his jealousy toward the girl he loves embitters him, and he loses his gift.

"It appears that there are things in this world that we cannot understand," says Robert Sturua. "If we begin to perceive some third reality, the parallel world, it might prove to be harmful to mankind. There is something very important: some talents must be used with extreme caution. This is one of the ideas in this play. In it I touched upon the reasons why horrible wars break out between different nations. There is nationalism in Georgia, as in other countries. Nevertheless our play is not about purely Georgian problems. Directors, I too, subconsciously seek to speak about things which worry everyone. The world today is unified, and we cannot shut ourselves up in our own shell."

In the Georgian theater passions are always somewhat higher than they are on the Russian or Western stage. Sturua says: "the Georgians feel acutely that they are mortal, and therefore they want to take everything from their life. Georgian actors play with such despair, as if they will die the next minute." That is why the Georgian theater seems to Russian theater-goers, who have a taste for strong emotions, even more Russian than their own.

"Evidently this feeling is connected with some theater tradition," says Robert Sturua. "One of those who founded our theater was Mardzhanishvili, a representative of the Russian school of theater. In the early 1920s he worked with the Arts Theater and other Russian theaters. When he returned to Georgia in the 1920s, he brought Russian traditions to the Georgian stage. As for me, I am a disciple of Mikhail Tumanishvili, whose teacher was St.Petersburg's director Georgy Tovstonogov. For his part, Tovstonogov was an adherent of the Stanislavsky system, which actors view as the essentials of their profession."

Robert Sturua is uncommonly energetic and active: he works much both in Georgia and in other countries. At present he is engaged in staging "Hamlet" at the Satirikon Theater in Moscow. This is not the first time he is staging "Hamlet", but it differs from the play which he staged in London, and which, according to the British Shakespearean Society, is one of the top ten Shakespearean productions.

According to Robert Sturua, his best productions staged abroad are "Electra" in Greece, Tchaikovsky's opera "Yevgeny Onegin" staged in Bologna's municipal theater in Italy, where the great Mirella Freni sang, "Three Sisters" with Vanessa Redgrave staged in Britain and Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" staged in Helsinki.

Sturua worked with many world-known actors. He says: "To me all actors are the representatives of one nation, though it's easier for me to work with Georgians and Russians. We know each other better, we know what is more important to us. But I cannot help noting the professionalism of British and Finnish artists."

Today we, the Muscovites, meet with the art of Georgia, as with the art of other former Soviet republics, more rarely. But this has made us realize how we miss each other, how we love the special, spicy taste of the theater created by the nation which "tends to exaggerate and loves to play," as Robert Sturua describes the Georgians.

The Holy Trinity and St. Sergius Lavra

By Vladimir Zotov

Board a Moscow train headed north-west and encounter a miracle on the way. From behind the horizon a beautiful scene will emerge, reminding you of illustrations to a fairy tale. Sparkling in the sun are gilded and star-spangled blue church domes crowned with lace-like crosses, all in a frame of white-stone walls. This is the Holy Trinity and St. Sergius Monastery, a unique place that has accumulated Russia's cultural and spiritual strength, a magnificent monument of Russian stone architecture. The monastery was founded by one of the most honored saints of the Russian Orthodox Church, St. Sergius of Radonezh more than six centuries ago.

According to a chronicle, in 1337 Sergius and his brother Stefan erected a wooden church deep in a forest to commemorate the Holy Trinity. In time the wood rotted or burned, set on fire by enemy arrows and the church disappeared. Two centuries later Ivan the Terrible erected new monastery buildings on the site. Using brick and white stone, he made them unassailable to both time and the enemy. Thanks to its stone walls and prayers the monastery remained a landmark at the many crossroads of Russian history and has survived to this day.

Today, the Holy Trinity and St. Sergius Lavra is a magnificent ensemble of international value. The extensive territory of its main estate, fortified with guard towers, features 55 cathedrals and other buildings of the 15th-19th centuries. Among these is one of the first memorial structures of Moscovian Russia - the Trinity Cathedral (1422) with a unique iconostasis produced by the leading icon painters of the early 15th century, Andrei Rublyov and Daniil Chyorny; the 86-meter Refectory executed in the style of Russian baroque with the Church of Sergius (1692); the 88-meter five-tiered belfry (1740); the magnificent five-domed Cathedral of the Assumption (1685); and the Rotonda Church of Smolensk (1748).

The Monastery was not only a religious center and stronghold of believers. With 2.5 km of fortifications, it could protect Russia from enemies. Standing on the slope of a manmade hill with its three sides surrounded by the floodlands of two rivers, it formed a single system of manmade and natural fortifications.

The Lavra of today is the spiritual center of the entire Orthodox world. A visitor marvels not only at the beauty and grandeur of its churches and cathedrals but at the number of believers attracted by the holiness of the spot.

"What is the church? The church is people," says the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and Yurievsk Pitirim. "For all the people of Russia, and Orthodox believers in particular, the Lavra stands at the center of our historical, cultural and spiritual development. For believers it is a holy spot to which we come to be blessed by St. Sergius of Radonezh. For others it's an object of national pride."

Over the centuries, the secular authorities have several times changed their attitude to the church. The Soviet government persecuted believers and demolished churches across Russia. But it did not have the heart to destroy the Lavra. From 1920 to 1946 the buildings housed a museum, educational institutions, workshops and even dwellings, anything but a functioning monastery. After World War Two the Lavra was returned to the church, but decades without repair left their imprint. Recently a government board of experts adopted a national restoration program. According to Pitirim, this is the first large-scale project involving a religious object in Russia. The program is headed by the Patriarch and the Russian President. It indicates the present attitude to the nation's culture.

THE FABERGE FOUNDATION: IN SEARCH OF LOST TREASURES

By Vera Zherdeva

In Russia, as in any other country, museum treasures do not lie under people's feet. However not all of them have been inventoried, since in the 20th century Russia was swept by wars and revolutions so many times, that in the vortex of events some things were lost, some got displaced, some were thrown into confusion. For instance, still there are many mysteries in the history of gems made by the great Russian jeweller Karl Faberge. And this is not surprising, since even the name of Faberge, who had worked for the royal family, was excluded from Russia's cultural life for decades. In the meantime his name marked glittering diamond diadems, crowns of Russian emperors studded with pearls, graceful Easter eggs...

Here's the history of Faberge's firm. In 1842, having come to Petersburg from Switzerland, the father of the outstanding jeweller Gustav Faberge opened a jewellery shop. Karl was born and raised in Russia. In 1870 he succeeded to his father's business and transformed the shop into a big jeweller's factory with affiliations in Moscow, Odessa, Kiev and London. Had the 1917 revolution not taken place, 70-year-old Karl Faberge would evidently never have left Russia.

The descendants of the great jeweller have not forgotten the country Karl Faberge viewed as his Motherland. Last year the presentation of the memorial Faberge Foundation established by his grand-daughter Tatiana took place in Moscow. A major goal of that no longer young woman was to bring the name of Faberge back to Russia.

Her grandfather viewed himself as a Russian, said Tatiana Faberge. He was a true Russian patriot. "When Tsar Nicholas II said at the start of World War I that it was necessary to return capital to Russia, my grandfather closed the London subsidiary of his firm and transferred all his money to Russian banks. I believe it's my duty to bring the name of Karl Faberge back to Russia, revive the memory of him and restore his technique and craftsmanship, which made the art of jewellery in Russia famous throughout the world," Tatiana Faberge said at the presentation.

The foundation began its work with searching for the articles produced by Faberge's factory, describing and evaluating them. Strange as it is, not a single complete catalogue of articles made by Faberge exists in the world. Many articles can be judged only by their sketches preserved in the family archives by a miracle, though part of the archives was also lost when they were leaving Russia.

Prior to his departure from Russia Faberge deposited seven suitcases with gold and platinum jewellery at the Swiss Embassy in Petersburg for safekeeping. But after a search conducted in the embassy by the bolshevik secret police the valuables disappeared. As a matter of fact, not a single item has been discovered to this day... Karl Faberge's son Alexander also left some articles, probably less precious, with the factory staff for safekeeping. But in the holocaust of the Russian revolution those people and those articles also disappeared...

An almost detective story involved Karl Faberge's confidant Otto Bauer, whom the old jeweller entrusted with part of his valuables and with the inventory of his property left in Russia. Bauer emigrated to Latvia. He seemed to be leaving Russia empty-handed, but some time after his arrival graceful trinkets covered with jewels began to emerge in Latvia's capital Riga. No one could understand where they came from. Local jewellers could not even evaluate them properly: they qualified platinum rings as made of silver, gold figurines as gold-plated, and precious stones as imitations. Faberge's son urgently came to Latvia. He identified some of the ornaments as made at his father's factory, but at that time World War II broke out, and everything plunged into obscurity again.

It remains to hope that the Faberge Foundation will succeed in finding some of the lost relics. A member of the Foundation, historian Valery Skurlov, is addressing you:

Ladies and gentlemen, maybe you happen to possess an Easter egg made in the form of a toilet-case. It contains a small 13-piece manicure set. The egg was manufactured in 1889 for the Russian Empress Maria Fyodorovna. It costs 3 million dollars. This year marks 150 years since the empress was born, and it would be wonderful to find at least this article made by Faberge. I believe that this is possible.

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