Meyerhold wanted Hamlet to be played by two actors, perhaps a man and a woman, and for one Hamlet to read the tragic monologues and the other to bother him. The second Hamlet would be comic. I think that Raikh would have read the tragic monologues. Meyerhold had already tried her as Hamlet.
Meyerhold was worried by the Ghost. He didn't believe in ghosts.
But more important, the censors didn't believe in ghosts. And so Meyerhold thought about how to present him. He demonstrated how the Ghost would climb out of a huge old trunk, creaking and groaning.
The Ghost would wear glasses and galoshes and sneeze constantly. It was damp in the trunk and he had caught cold. Meyerhold was very funny talking about the Ghost. And then Akimov had a Hamlet without the Ghost. That's interesting too.
But at the time I was going through a serious crisis.* I was in terrible shape. Everything was collapsing and crumbling. I was eaten up
•In 1931, when Shostakovich was writing lmclass="underline" y Macbeth, a series of painful failures befell him: his ballet Bolt was taken out of the repertoire and the music to several plays and films did nothing to enhance his reputation (one production set to Shostakovich's music included circus horses and Alma the Trained Dog). He wanted to create "high art" and he was angry with all the pressures that were distracting him from his real work. His courtship of Nina Vasilyevna Varzar, his future wife! was going through a difficult and strained period at this time too.
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inside. I was writing my second opera then. My second finished one.
We'll talk another time about my unsuccessful operatic projects. There were enough of them. They cluttered up my mind and exhausted my spirit. But this one seemed to be going well and I wanted to complete it. But I was being pulled in all directions. I was being bothered.
It was a bad period in general. And Akimov kept after me. I had agreed to write the music, and, it's important to note, the theater had paid my advance. Akimov was a very vitriolic man, and persistent, and he kept seducing me with tales about how scandalous his Hamlet would be.
The point is that in those days, Hamlet was banned by the censors.
You may believe it or not. In general, our theater has had trouble with Shakespeare, particularly with Hamlet and Macbeth. Stalin could stand neither of these plays. Why ? It seems fairly obvious. A criminal ruler-what could attract the leader and teacher* in that theme ?
Shakespeare was a seer-man stalks power, walking knee-deep in blood. And he was so na'ive, Shakespeare. Pangs of conscience and guilt and all that. What guilty conscience ?
All that is conventional, na'ive, and beautiful. At times, Shakespeare speaks to us like a small child. When you talk with a child, the words aren't important. What's important is what lies behind the words-the mood, the music.
When I speak to small children I often don't delve into the meaning of their babble, I just listen to timbres. It's the same with Shakespeare.
When I read Shakespeare, I give myself up to the flow. It doesn't happen often. But those are the best moments. I read-and listen to his music.
Shakespeare's tragedies are filled with music. It was Shakespeare who said that the man who doesn't like music isn't trustworthy. Such a man is capable of a base act or murder. Apparently Shakespeare himself loved music. I'm always taken with one scene in Lear, in which the sick Lear awakens to music.
Stalin didn't give a damn about all these refinements, naturally. He simply didn't want people watching plays with plots that displeased
• "Leader and Teacher" · is one of the traditional formulas invariably appended to Stalin's name in his lifetime. Among the other epithets were "Great Railroad Engineer," "Friend of Children," "Great Gardener." These expressions arc still part of the ironic vocabulary of the Soviet intelligentsia.
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Eighteen-year-old
Sho takovich (standing econd
from left) among other
students of his professor in
piano at the Leningrad
Conservatory, Leonid
Nikolayev (seated fourth from
left). Note two other major
figures: the pianists Maria
Yudina (standing third from
left) and Vladimir Sofronitsky
(seated first from right).
Leningrad, 1924.
The young Shostakovich:
"I like to be treated with respect. "
T h e Leningrad
Conservatory, the
oldest and most
prestigious musical
academy in Russia.
In front is the
monument to
Rimsk y-Korsakov.
The director of the
Leningrad Conservatory,
Alexander Glazunov, the
"Russian Brahms." He
had been a Wunderkind
himself, and as such,
understood Shostakovich
especially well. 1 920s.
With his friend and
mentor Vsevolod
Meyerhold at the
director's Moscow
apartment. Shostakovich
was writing The Nose in
this period. Ten years
later Meyerhold would
disappear forever behind
Stalin's prison walls.
Moscow, 1 928.
Holding up the music for
the production of
Vladimir Mayakovsky's
comedy The Bedbug.
Seated (left to right) :
Shostakovich and
Meyerhold; standing (left
to right) : Mayakovsk y
(who shot himself in 1 930)
and avant-garde artist
Alexander Rodchenko.
Moscow, 1 929.
Shostakovich's patron,
Marshal Mikhail
Tukhachevsky, and his
wife, Nina. Stalin had
Tukhachevsky destroyed.
Director Nikolai Akimov.
Shostakovich wrote the music for
his scandalous production of
Hamlet. 1932.
The satirical writer Mikhail
Zoshchenko, Shostakovich's
friend. I n 1946, Party leader
Andrei Zhdanov would call him
an "abominable, lustful animal."
After a stormy romance, Shostakovich
married Nina Varzar in 1932. The opera
Lady Macbeth of Mstensk District, which
provoked Stalin's wrath, was dedicated to
her. Nina died in 1954.
With his closest friend,
the musicologist Ivan
Sollertinsk y.
The distinguished musicologist Boris
Asafiev. Shostakovich was never able
to forgive his betrayal.
A rare photograph: Stalin at the bier of Leningrad Party leader Sergei Kirov, killed, it is now believed, on Stalin's orders. Stalin used Kirov's murder as an excuse for massi e repressions. Next to Stalin i Andrei Zhdanov, later the Party ideologist on cultural matter . For man ear their tastes determined the official attitude toward Sho tako ich's mu ic.