Meyerhold, Vsevolod (EN)

Meyerhold Vsevolod, *10 February (28 January) 1874 Penza, †probably 2 February 1940 Moscow, Russian director and theatre theorist. He was the son of a German Jew settled in Russia, a merchant and distillery owner. Until 1895, he was Lutheran and his name was Karl Theodor Meiergold; his conversion to Orthodox Christianity and change of name did not prevent him from preserving the Jewish and German language and culture for the rest of his life. After two years of studying law at the University of Moscow, he was accepted into the School of Music and Drama of the Moscow Philharmonic Society (graduating with honours in 1898). Between 1898 and 1902, he was a member of the Art Theatre, which he left as a result of a conflict with V. Nemirovich-Danchenko. In 1902, he founded his own theatre – the New Drama Fellowship, where he developed his passion for experimentation in staging and directing. In 1905, he ran the Theatre-Studio (the so-called Studio on Povarskaya Street), a branch of the Artistic Theatre under the patronage of Konstantin Stanislavski. In 1906–07, he was the chief director at the theatre of V. Komissarzhevskaya Theatre in St Petersburg. In 1908, he began a directorial collaboration with the imperial theatres – the Alexandrinsky and Mariinsky—where, often in cooperation with the scenographer A. Golovin, he realised his most important pre-revolutionary productions of operas and musical dramas: Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (1909), Mussorgsky’s Boris Go dunov (1911), Gluck’s Orpheus (1911), Strauss’s Elektra and Stravinsky’s The Nightingale (1918), as well as dramatic plays, including Molière’s Don Juan (1910) and Lermontov’s Masquerade (1917). At the same time, Meyerhold collaborated intensively with experimental and cabaret theatres in Moscow (La Chauve-Souris) and St Petersburg (The Crooked Mirror, Intermedia House, The Foundry Theatre), where he worked under the Hoffmann-inspired pseudonym Dottore Dappertutto. He also taught acting at the School of Music, Drama, and Opera in St Petersburg. After a visit to Paris in 1913, he founded his own experimental studio (the Studio on Borodinskaya Street), where, between 1914 and 1916, he also edited and published the magazine “The Love for Three Oranges”. In its first issue, he published a modernised adaptation of the scenario of C. Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte, from which the magazine took its title. This text later served as the basis for Prokofiev’s libretto for his opera of the same name. In 1917, Meyerhold, as one of the few Russian artists, responded to Anatoly Lunacharsky’s call to participate in the reorganisation of artistic life in revolutionary Russia. In 1918, he joined the Bolshevik Party and was appointed director of the theatre department at the Commissariat of Education. As a civil servant and publicist, he sharply criticised the pre-revolutionary naturalism prevailing in the theatre, opposing it with his own concepts based on so-called “biomechanics” and elements of cubism, constructivism and futurism. In 1921, he resigned from his civil service career and founded a theatre bearing his own name, combined with an acting and directing school, where “biomechanics” formed the basis of teaching. In the 1920s, his productions of Gogol’s The Government Inspector (1926) and Mayakovsky’s plays The Bedbug (1929) and The Bathhouse (1930), which were satires on the reality of the time, contrary to the ideas of the revolution, on rampant bureaucracy and propaganda. Meyerhold entrusted the composition of the music for The Bedbug to the young D. Shostakovich. All three productions made a huge impression on the audience, but were met with ostentatious coldness and even hostility from official critics. In the 1930s, Meyerhold’s previously high position in Moscow’s theatre life gradually weakened, even though he enjoyed the recognition and respect of a significant part of the theatre community in Russia and growing fame in Western Europe. As an artist who refused to submit to the imposed aesthetic doctrine, he was accused by the authorities and official critics of formalism, mysticism and lack of ideology. In 1938, the Meyerhold Theatre was dissolved by decree of the Committee on Arts for failing to join the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the Revolution. In 1936, Meyerhold staged Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades in Leningrad, and after losing his own theatre, he accepted K. Stanislavski’s invitation to direct operas at the State Opera Theatre in Moscow. At that time, he undertook the premiere performance of Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko. At that time, the smear campaign against Meyerhold in the press was growing, and on 15 June 1939, during an all-Union meeting of directors in Leningrad, Meyerhold, accused of formalism, did not engage in self-criticism, defending his position. Two days later, he was arrested by NKVD officers and taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. After several months of torture, he was sentenced to death by firing squad, which was probably carried out on 2 February 1940. In 1955, the sentence was overturned and Meyerhold was posthumously rehabilitated. Meyerhold was one of the most prominent figures behind the great theatre reform in Europe in the early 20th century. His research and experiments also concerned opera theatre, for which he created a new staging concept. Its primary premise was to emphasise the visual aspect, which until then had been neglected. This was to be achieved through the precise integration of the spatial and movement-based arrangement of stage action and the singer’s gestures with the music—its rhythm, phrasing, and expression. For Meyerhold, opera was a kind of pantomime with added singing, which in this context lost its dominant position. He believed that opera performers should master stage acting techniques on a par with vocal technique, and that these techniques should be closer to the art of mime than to that of actors in naturalistic theatre. He was convinced that this was possible by the example of F. Chaliapin, in whose performance Meyerhold saw a truth of expression rarely achieved on the opera stage, rather than external details. In his views on the staging of musical drama, most fully expressed in his dissertation K postanovke “Tristana i Izoldy” v Mariinskom teatre 30 oktiabria 1909 goda (in: V. Meyerhold. Stati, pisma…), he referred to Wagner’s theoretical works, without, however, identifying with the concepts presented in them. Unlike the author of Oper und Drama, Meyerhold saw the relationship between the components of a synthetic work of art differently. The verbal text, identified by Wagner with drama, was of secondary importance to Meyerhold, while orchestral music, which imposed rhythm and dramatic concept, came to the fore. The emphasis was therefore placed on stage movement and dance.

Meyerhold’s staging of Tristan and Isolde at the Mariinsky Theatre broke with the canon established in Bayreuth. Illusory scenery was rejected, as were all props (e.g. armour) that could evoke associations with the real world; the singers’ gestures and facial expressions were also rendered unnatural. The traditional box stage was replaced by ashallow relief stage, closed at the back by a painted backdrop as a background for groups of characters. The dramatic action in group scenes involving the choir was to be based on collective, rhythmic gestures and movements, while individual actor-singers were to resemble moving sculptures.

Meyerhold implemented his ideas not only in subsequent stagings of musical dramas, but also in teaching, assuming that his new approach to directing also required a different type of singer. He instilled in his students a technique based on pantomime and dance. This technique, later supplemented with elements of commedia dell’arte, circus acrobatics, Russian fairground performances and Japanese Noh theatre, became the basis for “biomechanics” – a method of training actors developed by Meyerhold in the 1920s.

Meyerhold’s experiments had a significant impact on the shape of Prokofiev’s pre-revolutionary operas: The Gambler and The Love for Three Oranges. Meyerhold attempted to stage the former three times (1917, 1927, 1932), but never managed to stage the premiere. The failure of this collaboration, despite the complete artistic agreement between the composer and the director, was initially due to the reluctance of conservative singers, and later to protests from the Association of Proletarian Musicians and censorship decisions.

Literature:

V. Meyerhold Perepiska, Moscow 1976; Korespondencja Wsiewołoda Meyerholda 1896–1939, transl. E. P. Melech, Warsaw 1988

A. Fevralskii Prokofiev i Meyerhold, in: S. Prokofiev. Statii i matierialy, Moscow 1963; V. Meyerhold Theaterarbeit 1917–1930, ed. R. Tietze, transl. K. Hielscher, Munich 1974; E. Braun The Theatre of Meyerhold. Revolution on the Modern Stage, London 1979, 2nd revised edition titled Meyerhold. A Revolution in Theatre, London 1995 and e-book 1995; Spotkania z Meyerholdem. Wybór wspomnień, transl. P. Melech, Warsaw 1981; K. Rudnicki Meyerhold, Moscow 1981; J. Yelagin Tiomnyi genii (V. Meyerhold), 2nd edition, London, 1982; K. Braun Wielka reforma teatru w Europie, Wrocław 1984; K. Bliss Eaton The Theater of Meyerhold and Brecht, Westport-London 1985; R. Leach V. Meyerhold, Cambridge 1989; A. Gladkov Meyerhold, 2 vols., Moscow 1990; B. Picon-Vallin Meyerhold, Paris 1990; I. Glikman Meyerhold i muzykalnyi teatr, Leningrad 1990; H. Robinson Love for Three Operas. The Collaboration of V. Meyerhold and S. Prokofiev, in: Studien zur Musik des XX. Jahrhunderts in Ost- und Ostmitteleuropa, ed. D. Gojowy, Berlin 1990; Meyerhold repetiruet, 2 vols. ed. M. Sitkovetskaia, Moscow 1993; V. Shentalinskii Wskrzeszone słowo. Z “archiwów literackich” KGB, transl. H. Chłystowski, M. Kotowska, R. Niedzielko, E. Niepokólczycka, J. Waczków, Warsaw 1996; A. Gladkov Meyerhold Speaks, Meyerhold Rehearses, transl. and introduction A. Law, London 1997; J. Pitches Vsevolod Meyrhold, London 2003; D. Roesner Meyerhold – Theatre ‘Organized According to the Music’s Laws’, in: Musicality in Theatre: Music as a model, method and metaphor in theatre-making, pp. 57-100, Farnham (Surrey) 2014; G. Pawlak Rossica teatralne na łamach prasy Polski międzywojennej. Teatr radziecki i jego twórcy, “Napis” XXIV (2018), pp. 137–154, e-book https://journals.openedition.org/napis/695.