Although Meyerhold had welcomed the 1917 Revolution, his fiercely individualistic temperament and artistic eccentricity brought reproach and condemnation from Soviet critics.
In the 1930s he was accused of mysticism and neglect of socialist realism. Refusing to submit to the constraints of artistic uniformity and defending the artist's right to experiment, in 1939 he was arrested and imprisoned. Weeks later, his actress wife, Zinaida Raikh, was found brutally murdered in their apartment. Nothing more was heard of him in the West until 1958, when his death in 1942 was announced in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia-, in a later edition the date was changed to 1940.
After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the heavy restrictions on Soviet theatre began to relax, signalling a slow, cautious, and intermittent return to experimentation. The scale of the Soviet theatre was gigantic: companies played in more than 50 languages; there were vast numbers of theatres, many with huge and superbly equipped stages; companies of 100 actors or more were not unusual, and they maintained extensive repertoires. Yet the security derived from enormous state subsidies, combined with the vast output of work, tended to give rise to mediocre standards.
So large was the Soviet theatregoing public that the professional theatre could not satisfy the demand for dramatic entertainment, and every encouragement was given to the amateur movement. Most professional theatrical companies accepted responsibility for at least one amateur group, the members of the company giving much time to advising and training it. Amateur companies of outstanding merit were given the title "people's theatre".
In the 1960s the Soviet theatre gradually began to free itself from ideology, placing more emphasis on entertainment value. By the late 1970s one or two of the experimental companies could once more take their place alongside the best in Europe. The Rustaveli Company from Georgia was acclaimed during its visits to Britain in 1979 and 1980. Yury Lyubimov, director of the prestigious Taganka Theatre in Moscow, successfully reproduced his adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel С rime and Punishment in London in 1983 with British actors. In search of even more artistic freedom, he defected to the West the following year.
Theatre companies were afforded creative independence in the late 1980s. Until then, state policy had dictated that at least 50 per cent of a theatre's repertoire had to consist of contemporary Soviet plays, and at least 25 per cent of Russian classics and plays from the various Soviet states. This period was marked by the establishment of several experimental theatrical groups, as well as by an increase in commercial backing for productions. Works by foreign playwrights that had previously been banned began to be performed, and the government monopoly on theatre effectively came to an end. Labour unions were formed within the industry, and the National Union of Theatrical Leaders was established as an umbrella organization for all unions. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former Soviet republics sought to establish individual identities in theatre.
Puppet theatre has been another extremely successful area of theatrical performance in modern Russia. The central figure in this genre in the twentieth century was Sergey Obraztsov, a puppet master who effectively established puppetry as an art form in the Soviet Union. In 1931 Obraztsov was chosen by the Soviet government as the first director of the State Central Puppet Theatre, Moscow. His performances displayed marked technical excellence and stylistic discipline. In dozens of tours outside the Soviet Union, notably the 1953 tour of Great Britain and the 1963 tour of the United States, his shows enchanted audiences with classic figures, such as the dancing couple whose tango movements require the skill of seven puppeteers, and the female gypsy who sings bass.
A number of rod-puppet theatres were founded as a result of Obraztsov's tours. The Obraztsov Puppet Theatre (formerly the State Central Puppet Theatre) continues in the twenty-first century to give delightful performances for audiences 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.
Ballet
Classical ballet remains in the twenty-first century one of the primary expressions of Russian culture. Ballet was first introduced into Russia in the early eighteenth century, developed to maturity in the following century, and, unlike many other art forms, continued to flourish under Soviet rule. Some of the world's greatest performers, choreographers, theatre designers, and composers of ballet scores have been Russian, and many are still household names, having acquired international reputations through defection, emigration, or, in the case of the Ballets Russes, as part of a travelling troupe.
The country's first dedicated ballet school was formed in 1734. Throughout the nineteenth century dancers and choreographers, even those of non-Russian origin, worked for the Russian Imperial Theatres and were effectively government employees. The French-born dancer and choreographer Marius Petipa worked for more than 60 years at
St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, and had a profound influence on modern classical Russian ballet. He directed many of the greatest artists in Russian ballet and developed ballets that retain an important position in Russian dance repertoire, including Tchaikovsky's ballets Swan I.ake and The Sleeping Beauty. As in music and the visual arts, it was only towards the middle of the nineteenth century, however, that Russians infused the predominantly western European (particularly French and Italian) dance styles with Russia's own folk traditions.
The Ballets Russes
While from an international perspective Russian dancers had been considered supreme since the 1820s, the Russian ballet was spectacularly brought to the attention of the West by Sergey Diaghilev, who in 1909 founded the Ballets Russes. The opening season took place at the Thйвtre du Chвtelet in Paris, with dancers Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Michel Fokine. The performances set all Paris ablaze, and over the next 20 years the Ballets Russes, though never performing in Russia itself, boasted some of the best dancers from the imperial theatres in St Petersburg and Moscow, and became the foremost ballet company in the West. Diaghilev toured with his ballet uninterruptedly from 1909 to 1929, throughout Europe, in the United States, and in South America. During his later seasons he introduced the works of forward-looking composers and painters from France, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States. Among the composers represented in his repertory were Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Sergey Prokofiev.
ANNA PAVLOVA (1881-1931) Russian ballet dancer
Pavlova studied at the Imperial Ballet School from 1891 and joined the Mariinsky Theatre company in 1899, and became prima ballerina in 1906. In 1913 she left Russia to tour with her own company, which showcased her outstanding performances in classical ballets such as G/sel/e; the most famous numbers were a succession of short solos such as "The Dying Swan", choreographed for her by Michel Fokine. Her tours took ballet to audiences in many countries for the first time and did much to popularize ballet worldwide.
Diaghilev had a flair for bringing the right people together and a determination to create a novel form of spectacle based on a synthesis of the arts - dance, music, libretto, costume, and stage design - a "total work of art" in which no one element dominated the others. The company premiered some of the most significant ballets of the early twentieth century and popularized a distinctly Russian style, characterized by sensu- ousness, drama, exoticism, and primitive dynamism.