The cultural revival that was instigated at the beginning of the twentieth century was prompted to a certain extent by a desire to escape from a depressing political reality which was clearly going to worsen, but also partly by the simple and inevitable need to strike out in a new direction. Signs of the dawning of a new age in the arts had come with the production of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, which simultaneously represents the apotheosis of the Russian 'imperial style', and is also a work whose hallucinatory subject matter, nostalgic mood and stylistic pastiche align it with the preoccupations of the new generation of artists who emerged in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The rebellion against old forms and championing of the new saw Russian artists for the first time becoming leaders of the European avant- garde in the early years of the twentieth century, and, in the case of Stravinsky, Kandinsky and Malevich, changing the very language of art. Music was the last art form to be affected by the winds of change which now began to sweep through Russian cultural life, but it was ironically music which - through the agency of Stravinsky - was to make perhaps Russia's most significant contribution to the modernist movement in Europe.
The Russian avant-garde's rejection of rationality and concrete reality in favour of the world of the imagination can only partly be seen as a reaction to the superannuated realist movement. At a more fundamental level it was a reaction to the disintegration of moral and ethical values, religious beliefs and existing social structures which took place under the impact of Darwin's theories of evolution, the effects of capitalism and industrialisation and the ideas of such crucial figures as Nietzsche and Freud. The feelings of alienation, anxiety and loss of control which we associate with modern culture were particularly acute in fin de siecle Russia, where chaos and revolution loomed, but they nevertheless provided the stimulus for a cultural era of unprecedented richness and creativity, which came to a peak on the eve of the First World War.
In 1896 Mamontov relaunched his Private Opera company in Moscow. From the beginning, he had championed Russian opera, and he now began to focus on the works of Rimsky-Korsakov, many of which (beginning with Sadko, in 1898) received their premiere at his theatre. Like Mussorgsky and Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov believed that the quickest path to creating a native musical tradition was through opera, and also chose to write on almost exclusively Russian subjects: twelve of his fifteen operas are based on Russian themes. Whereas Mussorgsky and Borodin concentrated largely on historical topics, Rimsky-Korsakov was attracted to the more exotic world of Russian fairy tales, and his operas now began to occupy a firm foothold in the repertoire. Mamontov's other major contribution in the field of Russian opera during this second phase was to launch the career of the legendary bass Fedor Chaliapin, who made his debut at the Private Opera in 1896, singing the role of Susanin in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar. In 1898 the company undertook a triumphant tour to St Petersburg, with Chaliapin performing the title role in Boris Godunov, which helped to reverse that opera's fortunes following neglect by the Imperial Theatres.
Two new ventures which were to have a lasting impact on Russian cultural life were launched in 1898, one in Moscow and the other in St Petersburg. The Moscow Art Theatre, founded by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, was to revolutionise Russian theatre and achieved its greatest renown through its productions of Chekhov's four last plays. The amateur actor and director Stanislavsky, scion of one of the great merchant families in Moscow, made a good team with the drama teacher and playwright Nemirovich-Danchenko. Picking up on the new approach to the stage that had first started with Wagner, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko elevated drama to high art, investing it with the capacity not only to uplift but to transform and enlighten its audiences. Initially the educational aspect oftheir activities was emphasised in the word 'accessible' being part of the company's original title, but was later dropped. The word 'artistic' (typically contracted in English to 'art') remained, however, serving as a reminder of the idealistic goals nurtured by the theatre's founders. Going to the theatre suddenly became a serious business; lights were no longer kept burning during performances so that audience members could inspect each other; they were dimmed, forcing spectators to concentrate on what was unfolding on stage in pitch blackness. The decor ofthe auditorium was similarly austere - a marked change to the gilt and velvet of traditional theatres. Productions were properly rehearsed, and a production method pioneered which placed the emphasis on ensemble work. For the first time in the Russian theatre, stagings were conceptual, their style and atmosphere determined by a director. Chekhov's The Seagull (Chaika), first performed on I7 December I898, was the Moscow Art Theatre's sixth production, and its success saved the theatre from plummeting to financial disaster in its first season. After a scandalous first production of the play by the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg in I896, Chekhov had been reluctant for it to be turned into a travesty a second time round, but in the end had no cause to regret giving his agreement after Nemirovich-Danchenko had pleaded with him on two occasions. Uncle Vanya, completed in 1895, was performed by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899, and Chekhov's last two plays, The Three Sisters (Tri sestry, 1901) and The Cherry Orchard (Vishnevy sad, 1904), were written specifically for the Moscow Art Theatre. Another dramatist who enjoyed success at the Moscow Art Theatre was Maxim Gorky, whose Lower Depths (Ha dne) was staged in 1902. Gorky's gritty indictment of contemporary society was better suited to the hyper-realist style that was Stanislavsky's trademark, and which was ironically inappropriate for Chekhov's subtle theatre of mood. Thanks to Savva Morozov, the merchant millionaire who was its chief patron, in 1902 the Moscow Art Theatre was able to move into a new building designed for the company by Russia's finest avant-garde architect Fedor Shekhtel, who also built opulent Art Nouveau mansions for Mamontov in 1897, and for Stepan Ryabushinskii, another wealthy industrialist, in I900-2.
Just as the Moscow Art Theatre could not survive without the patronage of Morozov, the arts journal founded in St Petersburg in 1898 also depended on substantial financial backing. The World of Art was edited by a group of cosmopolitan and eclectic young aesthetes led by the flamboyant figure of Sergei Diaghilev, a key figure in the history of Russian Modernism, who was also expert at raising money. This came principally from Princess Maria Tenisheva, who had founded another important artists' colony at her estate in Talashkino in the 1890s (Mamontov had offered support, but his arrest in 1899 led to his bankruptcy). No Russian magazine had even been so beautifully or so carefully produced, and the World of Art's physical appearance, together with its all-encompassing title, say much about the priority of purely aesthetic categories. Indeed, the members of the highly eclectic World of Art group whose members included Aleksandr Benois, Leon Bakst, Konstantin Somov and Ivan Bilibin were torchbearers for the artistic movement which had begun to liberate Russian culture from the earnest utilitarianism that had dominated all the arts in the preceding period. In particular, they provided one of the first platforms for the poets who called themselves Symbolists. Led initially by Valerii