Mamontov's Private Opera: The Search for Modernism in Russian Theater

Notes

297 Introduction 1. Numerous examples of this popular view may be seen, for instance, on the pages of Richard Taruskin’s Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of Works Through Mavra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 2. The term “Silver Age,” coined years after the fact by that era’s muse and icon, poet Anna Akhmatova, has become controversial of late, as is bound to happen to any overused historical label; see Omry Ronen, The Fallacy of the Silver Age in Twentieth -Century Russian Literature (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997). However, it is still commonly used to designate both the time period and the cultural ideology of early Russian modernism, and will be used as such in the present study. 3. For recent examples, see Boris Gasparov, Robert P. Hughes, and Irina Paperno, eds., Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), Irina Paperno and Joan Delaney Grossman , eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism (Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniversityPress,1994),andGalinaRylkova,TheArchaeologyofAnxiety:TheRus-­ sian Silver Age and Its Legacy (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). 4. The word “artist” will occur frequently in the following discussion, particularly in the primary sources, and needs to be accompanied by a translator’s note. What is translated into English as the word “artist” may in Russian mean “actor,” both dramatic and operatic (a cognate, artiste), “painter” (khudozhnik), or—frequently, in relation to Mamontov—“a man of art,” that is, an artist in spirit rather than occupation (in Russian, also khudozhnik). 5. On the Silver Age cabaret culture and its influence on Meyerhold, Evreinov, and other Russian modernist stage directors, see Barbara Henry, “Theatricality, Antitheatricality , and Cabaret in Russian Modernism,” in Russian Literature, Modernism and the Visual Arts, ed. Catriona Kelly and Stephen Lovell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 149–71. 6. For more information on Victory over the Sun, including costume sketches, see Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863–1922 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 158–59, 185. notes 298 · notes to pages 3–7 7. For a standard biography, see Mark Kopshitser, Savva Mamontov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972), and somewhat more fictionalized Ekaterina Kiselëva, Dom na Sadovoi [A House on Sadovaia Street] (Moscow: Moskovskii Rabochii, 1986); see also the chronology of Mamontov’s life and artistic career in appendix A. 8. The circumstances of the trial are briefly as follows. Mamontov, together with several colleagues from the Moscow-Yaroslavl’ Railroad Company, was accused of fraud and embezzlement of the company funds. Specifically, the prosecution alleged that Mamontov personally appropriated over a million rubles to support his exorbitant lifestyle; his involvement with the MPO was offered as an example of said excess. The defense team, headed by the legendary attorney Fyodor Plevako, argued that the missing funds had not been stolen for Mamontov’s personal use. Rather, they were transferred from one of his enterprises to others; specifically, two Siberian factories purchased at the request of the government in order to keep them from being acquired by a German industrial conglomerate and used for military purposes. It was alleged (although never proven) that a loan arranged by the prime minister, Carl Witte, was supposed to cover the purchase and return the money to the railroad coffers, but the internal power struggle within the government led Witte to step aside and let Mamontov take the blame. While Mamontov’s activities broke the rules of fiscal discipline, his motives were shown to be purely altruistic and serving Russia’s best interests. His patronage of the arts and specifically the MPO was portrayed as equally unselfish; furthermore, it was proven that no company funds were used to support it. On 8 June 1900, after a two-week trial, the jury acquitted Mamontov and his codefendants of any criminal wrongdoing. The matter of the missing funds was left unresolved, pending a transfer of the case to a civil court, which declared Mamontov bankrupt later that year. For a full account of the proceedings, see “Delo Mamontova, Artsibusheva , Krivosheina i Drugikh: Polnyi i Podrobnyi Otchët” [The Case of Mamontov, Artsibushev, Krivoshein, and Others: Full and Complete Account] (Moscow, 1900), preserved as item 72, fund 155, BM. 9. The troupe and most of its assets were absorbed by the newly established Zimin’s Private Opera (1904–17); for more information, see appendix A and Viktor Borovskii, Moskovskaia opera S. I. Zimina [Moscow Opera of S. I. Zimin] (Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1977). 10. See...