Leningrad, 1934.
T I M E
T H E \\' E E J..: ! Y '1 E "
A (, .\ ? ! f
During World War I I ,
Shostakovich i n a fire fighter's
helmet was a symbol of Russian
resistance to H itler's armies.
(Copyright 1 942, Time Inc. All
rights reserved.)
The composer Veniamin Fleishman (seated second from right), a student of Shostakovich's, who died during the war in the battle defending Leningrad. Stunned b his death, Shostakovich completed and orchestrated Fleishman's opera Rothschild's Violin, based on the Chekhov story.
Three titans of Soviet music: they were enemies, they were friends.
From the left : Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian. Mosco.w, 1945.
With bomber pilots
( 1942). Shostakovich
took his wartime
obligations serious} ..
Tikhon Khrennikov, appointed b Stalin to administer So iet music, attacks Shostakovich at the first Composers' Congress: 'J\.rmed with clear Party directi e , we will put a final end to an manife tations of anti
People formalism and decadence, no matter what defensive coloration the may take on ." Moscow, 1948.
The Congress "unanimously" condemned "formalists": Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and other leading composers.
him; you never know what might pop into the mind · of some demented person. Of course, all the people knew once and for all that Stalin was the greatest of the great and the wisest of the wise, but he banned Shakespeare just in case. What if someone decided to play Hamlet or Macduff?
I remember how they stopped a rehearsal of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theater. It was, if you can put it that way, Stalin's "favorite" theater. More precisely, it was the only theater that the leader approved fully and entirely. For the actor playing Hamlet, the banning of the play became a real tragedy. Hamlet had been his dream, everyone around him understood that this would have been a fantastic Hamlet.
But Stalin's word was law, and the leader and teacher didn't even have to give a written order. There was no order, just a wish. Why forbid ? You might go down in history with a less than noble image.
It's better to merely ask, as Stalin did, "Why is this necessary-playing Hamlet in the Art Theater, eh ?" That was all, that was enough.
The play was removed and the actor drank himself to death.
And for many long years Hamlet was not seen on the Soviet stage.
Everyone knew about Stalin's question directed at the Art Theater and no one wanted to risk it. Everyone was afraid.
And King Lear? Everyone knows that our best Lear was Mikhoels*
in the Jewish Theater and everyone knows his fate. A terrible fate.
And what about the fate of our best translator of Shakespeare----:Pasternak ?
Almost every name bears a tragedy, more tragic than anything in Shakespeare. No, it's better not to become involved with Shakespeare.
Only careless people would take on such a losing proposition. That Shakespeare is highly explosive.
But back then, in my youth, I gave in to Akimov's exhortations. He was a unique director, a siren with a cabbage head. Akimov was always elegantly dressed and extremely polite, but it was better not to be the butt of his wit or his pen. Akimov was a mean artist. His caricatures were lethal. I think I got off lightly.
•Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels (Vovsi; 1 890-1 948), Jewish actor and director. He was brutally murdered on Stalin's orders and the murder was said to be an attack by hooligans. In 1 943, when Mikhoels was chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (later disbanded by Stalin), he came to America on Albert Einstein's invitation. In New York he appeared with Mayor La Guardia in the Polo Grounds before a crowd of 50,000.
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Akimov obtained provisional permission for a production of Hamlet.
This was a major victory. The problem was that the previous Moscow production of the play was deemed totally inadmissible by the censors.
The legendary Mikhail Chekhov played Hamlet. He, as you know, was an anthroposophist, and he imbued his theater with anthroposophy. Hamlet was staged that way. Mikhail Chekhov set the play in Purgatory. Literally. That is, Chekhov thought that Shakespeare had written a purely symbolic play, that everyone was actually dead. The courtiers were the souls of the dead and the protagonists were anthroposophic symbols.
Probably Mikhail Chekhov sincerely believed that Shakespeare really was an anthroposophist, and that's how he played Hamlet. The atmosphere was otherworldly. The actors were brilliant, after all, and Chekhov was simply a genius. The audience came away from this strange Hamlet with the feeling that it had just come from the other world. You see what mysterious ideas artistic people can have. You might call them delirious. Officials saw the play and, horrified, banned Hamlet immediately as a reactionary, pessimistic, and mystical play.
Akimov, as I said, was a mean man, but a jolly one. He saw Mikhail Chekhov's interpretation of Hamlet and was outraged. He told me, "I look at the stage and think, Could the author of this morose delirium really be Shakespeare ?" Akimov developed a passionate desire to stage his own Hamlet. That often happens: inspiration from the contrary, so to speak. For example, Meyerhold conceived his version of The Queen of Spades under the influence of a terrible production he had seen. He later told me that he would have been ready to strangle the tenor who sang Gherman if he had run into him in a dark alley.
Akimov suffered mightily during Chekhov's Hamlet and it was the final straw that led to his own conception of the play. The concept was, I must say, revolutionary. Akimov decided to stage it as a comedy.
A comedy of struggle for power. Akimov gave the part to a rather famous comic actor. The actor was stocky and fat, a man who loved food and drink. I might note that this corresponds to the text of the play, which mentions Hamlet's corpulence. But the audience is completely unused to it. It's used to exalted Hamlets, to sexless Hamlets, I would say. Or rather, to androgynous ones in black, thigh-hugging tights.
Women have played Hamlet-Asta Nilsen, I think. And Zinaida 88