Theater "Bat". Theater-cabaret "Bat" Theater "Bat"
G.S. Burdzhalov and other actors of the Art Theater. Initially it existed as a club for actors of this theater.
Evenings of the Bat (first parody of the play Blue bird took place on February 29, 1908 in the basement of Pertsov’s house on Prechistenskaya embankment) were in the nature of improvisation and were designed for artistic and artistic bohemia. They consisted of comic performances by K.S. Stanislavsky, O.L. Knipper-Chekhova, V.I. Kachalov, A.G. Koonen, and parodies of theater performances. The bat, a creature that neither birds nor animals recognize as their own, depicted on the theater curtain, also served as an ironic reference to the seagull, the symbol of the Art Theater.
After mysterious death Tarasov in 1910, who was the soul and sponsor of the evenings, Baliev was forced to make the performances chargeable, which affected both the composition of the audience and the repertoire (by that time, due to the flood of 1909, the theater moved to B. Milyutinsky Lane, 14, now st. Markhlevsky). The actors' night club, having separated from the Moscow Art Theater, turned into an independent repertory theater aimed at an educated, wealthy audience. His new status finally took shape in 1912, when N.F. Baliev, remaining an entertainer, served as both director and artistic director of the theater.
The 1910s were a time of “cabinet epidemic” in the theatrical life of Russia. Following "The Bat" B.K. Pronin’s cabaret “Lukomorye”, “Comedians’ Halt” and “Stray Dog”, V. Meyerhold’s “House of Sideshows” open in St. Petersburg. The emergence of cabaret became a phenomenon in the art of theater of the Silver Age, brought to life by the interest in parody and stylization experienced by the symbolists and artists from the circle of the World of Art magazine. "Bat" became the first sign. Stylized miniatures, a genre of animated paintings, enjoyed success: Vyatka toys,Women F.A.Malyavina,Japanese fan,Chinese porcelain; melodic recitation (poems by P. Beranger), staged romances ( Don't tempt,How beautiful, how fresh the roses were), buffoonery ( Scandal with Napoleon). The actors of the Art Theater still willingly performed in cabaret. Baliev used the genre of amateur evenings: dances, jokes, puns, charades, songs. The audience was also attracted by Baliev’s witty compere, who based his performances on a “scandal”, a clash of polar opinions. His sketches, reprises, parodies, and witty announcements of numbers were the “highlight” of the evenings. The authors of the texts were: A.Z. Serpoletti, L.G. Munshtein (editor of the magazine “Ramp and Life”), T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, N.A. Teffi with her daughter, poetess E. Buchinskaya, A.N. Tolstoy, I.G. Erenburg. Being a theater of high taste, cabaret easily captured artistic fashion and made discoveries of great art accessible to the public.
A type of synthetic actor was formed in the theater: reader, dancer, singer, improviser. The troupe consists of: V.A. Podgorny, Ya.M. Volkov, V.Ya. Khenkin, Ya.D. Yuzhny, K.E. Gibshman, T.Kh. Heinz, E.A. Khovanskaya and others. Directed by V.V. Luzhsky, I.M. Moskvin, E.B. Vakhtangov, Baliev himself.
Since 1914, the theater, without changing its name, has become closer in type to the theater of miniatures. From elegant, highly artistic trifles, the theater moved on to staging stage miniatures based on classical operetta and vaudeville ( Six brides and no grooms F. Suppe, Wedding by lanterns J. Offenbach), to dramatizations of classic works: Queen of Spades And Bakhchisarai fountain A.S. Pushkin, Tambov treasurer M.Yu. Lermontova, Nose,Overcoat,Stroller,Mirgorod N.V. Gogol, complaint book,Chameleon A.P. Chekhov, (director A.A. Arkhangelsky).
In 1915, the theater moved to the basement of the new apartment building of E. Nirnzee at B. Gnezdnikovsky Lane, 10. This was its third address (now the premises of the RATI Educational Theater). The foyer and curtain of the theater were painted by S. Sudeikin (later, in exile, he continued to collaborate with the theater along with M. Dobuzhinsky, N. Annenkov, whose wife, ballerina E. Galpern, was an actress in “Die Fledermaus”). Here the voice of V. Barsova sounded for the first time, R. Zelenaya and I. Ilyinsky appeared, the Satirical Chapel performed under the direction of I. V. Moskvin, and V. I. Kachalov read poetry.
In February 1917, reviews of political events began Pages of Russian history, grotesque At 12 o'clock at night. Operettas by J. Offenbach Beautiful Elena And Orpheus in Hell were the last productions of the theater under Baliev (1918). The elegant, but inconsonant with the revolution, cabaret aesthetics did not fit well with the new times.
In 1919, Baliev, wary of the revolution, took the troupe on tour to Kyiv, then returned, but in 1920 he left with part of the troupe to emigrate, to Paris, then to New York, where he revived the theater.
In Russia, the rest of the troupe continued to work under the leadership of director K. Kareev. Without Baliev's leadership and compereance, it was a different theater, although the repertoire did not change. Attempts to revive the former glory of the theater were the invitation of directors A. Arkhangelsky, N. Evreinov, V. Mchedelov (the latter staged the play by A. Remizov Tsar Maximilian, season 19211922). The performance was a success for the theater against the backdrop of a number of boring evenings and a half-full auditorium. The remaining part of the troupe in Moscow was jokingly called the “candied mouse.” In 1922, for non-payment of rent for the premises, the theater left the Nirnzee house forever, where its place was taken by the Crooked Jimmy cabaret (the future Moscow Satire Theater). Part of the “Bat” troupe joined this group. And although the genre of the new theater was related to Baliev’s theater, its style was sharper, rougher, more primitive than the subtle, lyrical, filigree manner of “The Bat,” the brainchild of the Moscow Art Theater.
In 1989-2001 G. Gurvich revived the miniature theater under the legendary name on the stage of the Film Actor Studio (the authors of the idea were M. Zakharov and G. Gorin).
Elena Yaroshevich
The cabaret theater arose in 1908 from the “cabbets” of the Moscow Art Theater; it initially existed as a club for actors of this theater. Organizers - N.F. Baliev and N.A. Tarasov (together with O. L. Knipper, V. I. Kachalov, I. M. Moskvin and others). The club’s “performing evenings” were improvisational in nature, designed for “their” audience, and included comic performances by K.S. Stanislavsky, Knipper, Kachalov and others, parodies of Moscow Art Theater performances. Since 1910, the club began to give paid performances, which influenced the composition of the audience and the repertoire; in 1912 it was transformed into an independent commercial cabaret theater aimed at wealthy and educated audiences. The director, artistic director and entertainer was Baliev. Regular authors - B.A. Sadovskaya and T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik.
Genres of amateur evenings were actively used - everyday dances, jokes, puns, charades, intimate songs. In the theater, a type of synthetic actor was formed, capable of combining a reader, dancer, singer, and improviser. The troupe included V.A. Podgorny, Ya.M. Volkov, V.Ya. Henkin, K.E. Gibshman, E.A. Marsheva, A.F. Heinz, E.A. Khovanskaya and others. Directed by V.V. Luzhsky, Moskvin, Baliev, E.B. Vakhtangov and others.
Since 1914, the Bat Theater, without changing its name, gradually approached the type of miniature theater. The tables were replaced by rows of chairs, the leading genre was the stage miniature, built on the basis of classical operetta, vaudeville (“Six Brides and No Groom” by F. Suppe, “Wedding by Lanterns” by J. Offenbach), dramatizations of classic works (“The Queen of Spades” A. S. Pushkin, “Treasurer” by M. Y. Lermontov, “Nose”, “Overcoat” and “Carriage” by N. V. Gogol, “Complaint Book”, “Chameleon” by A. P. Chekhov, etc.). Since 1908, the club was located in the basement of Pertsov’s house; After the flood, he moved to Milyutinsky Lane. Since 1915 in the basement of the Nirnzee house (Bolshoi Gnezdnikovsky Lane, 10). In 1920, part of the theater troupe led by Baliyev emigrated, and a new, European stage of “The Bat” began. The rest of the troupe became part of the Satyr-agitheater.
“The Art Theater is a most serious theater, with heroic tension, in seething creative forces solving the most complex stage problems.” “Die Fledermaus” should become a place of constant rest for theater people, a kingdom of “free but beautiful jokes, and away from outside audiences.” This is what the critic N. Efros, close to the Art Theater, wrote, who became a witness and adviser of the first, still preparatory steps of the cabaret. “Away from the outside public” - these words, a kind of motto of “The Bat”, became the first and main point of its Charter, which proclaimed the strictest intimacy and non-publicity of the Moscow Art Theater actors’ cabaret.
“It will be,” shared N. Baliev shortly before the opening of The Bat - a kind of Art Theater club, inaccessible to others. It’s incredibly difficult to become a member of the circle.” The founding members of “The Bat” - and they were all the main actors of the Art Theater: O. L. Knipper, V. I. Kachalov, I. M. Moskvin, V. V. Luzhsky, G. S. Burdzhalov, N. F. Gribunin, N.G. Aleksandrov and, in addition, N.F. Baliev and N.L. Tarasov - developed a very complex voting system for “outsiders” who could be included in the circle members only by unanimous election. “On the first ballot, not a single new member was elected, because everyone had at least one “dark”.” This system had to be quickly abandoned.
The close circle of “artists” was expanded only by musicians, artists, writers, and people close to the theater. After the first “executive meeting” - as the cabaret evenings were called - the newspaper chronicle reported that among the “outsiders” present were L. Sobinov, V. Petrova-Zvantseva, director of the Maly Theater N. Popov and artist of the New Theater A. Kamionsky.
The mystery of what was happening in the closed club of the Art Theater heightened the curiosity of the theater audience. Rumors - one more tempting than the other - teased the imagination and excited “all of Moscow.” The performances in the night acting tavern were like nothing else.
They said that Stanislavsky himself danced the cancan there with Moskvin; they said that the majestic Knipper was humming a frivolous chansonette, and Nemirovich-Danchenko, who had never held a baton before, was leading a small orchestra, to which Alisa Koonen and Kachalov were dancing a polka or a wildly fiery mazurka...
“Jokes of the Gods” - this is how the correspondent, admitted a year after the opening of the Art Theater cabaret, will call his note.
The actors jealously guarded their intimacy.
Acting is the most public of professions, moreover, its whole essence, its whole meaning is in publicity - and suddenly it slams the doors in front of the audience! The Moscow public could not comprehend this paradox.
Meanwhile, the actors of the Art Theater, perhaps without knowing it, were to some extent reviving the idea that had once inspired the creators of the first cabarets in France. Organizers of cabarets of different styles, separated by tens of years and thousands of kilometers, were brought together by common goals: to create their own, special world in the world of commercial civilization, where one could hide from the intolerable vulgarity and prosaism of life.
The artists’ “retreat” into the world they created was carried out in the most literal way. The “Bat” should not have been entered from the front entrance Pertsova at home , which began with a luxurious hall in painting and stucco, into which the elevator doors, decorated with dark wood and mirrors, swung open, and from the alley, through a narrow, Gothic-shaped door, going down the stairs. Ten steps leading to the dungeon separated the actors’ refuge from “earthly” life. The basement came to life after midnight. The convention of guests was scheduled for twelve at night. Night life - quite natural for actors (daytime and evening hours are busy for them) - also had a hidden meaning, intelligible only to the initiated. The mysterious night, opposing the rational, sadly prosaic day, has long been known as an ally of artists.
Spinning the bat
Among the night lights,
We will embroider a motley pattern
Against the backdrop of dim days, -
This is how it was sung, half-seriously and half-ironically, in the anthem “The Bat.” It was no coincidence that the actors took the bat as the patron of their night vigils (it is no coincidence black cat on the sign of the Montmarte cabaret of Rudolf Saly or a black owl on one of the St. Petersburg literary taverns) is a creature with a rather dubious reputation, as sensible people know. “Sane people” had nothing to do in the cabaret.
For the opening of “The Bat,” Kasyanov’s day was deliberately chosen, February 29, an “extra,” some not entirely legal and not entirely serious day of the year (the anniversary was therefore celebrated only on leap years. The last anniversary of “The Bat” was held in 1920, when there was no time for jokes with “Reverend” Kasyan).
In the “artists” club, everything tried to look different from what it was in everyday life, everything emphasized the peculiarity, the exclusivity of the world created for themselves by the creators: walls painted by artists K. Sapunov (brother of the famous Nikolai Sapunov) and A. Klodt, from floor to ceiling covered with an exquisite patterned ornament. And the house itself - the famous Pertsov House in Moscow, recently built near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on the embankment of the Moscow River, had a bizarre and very fashionable architecture at the time, simultaneously reminiscent of a medieval castle and an ancient Russian tower.
The cult of refined decoration that reigned in the cabaret had little in common with the arrogant luxury of Russian bourgeois salons at the beginning of the century. The spirit of composition that permeates the cabaret was ironically shaded - and complemented! - the utilitarianism of the heavy, unpainted table stretching the entire length of the basement, the tightly knocked together benches on which the night brethren were crowded - the decor of the tavern vividly resembled an artist’s studio.
There was a buffet counter on the wall opposite the stage. There were no waiters in the artistic tavern. Everyone walked up to the counter, put sandwiches on their plate, left money and returned to the common table.
Various kinds of hidden and overt polemics with the life taking place behind the walls of the cabaret gave its atmosphere a special attractiveness and poignancy: the community of policemen and townspeople was contrasted here with a community of artists, an artistic brotherhood; official stiffness, dull decency of bureaucratic officialdom - naturalness and ease of behavior, freedom and authenticity of communication between people.
Anyone invited to the “Bat” certainly underwent a rite of passage into “cabaretiers”: the duty founder of the cabaret, “wearing,” N. Efros noted in passing, “by the way, an all-Russian name” (by the way, that evening it was Kachalov), installed on him a paper cap. The jester's cap - a sign of belonging to a special world - seemed to free its wearer from the norms established in life “above”. The one crowned with it thereby vowed to leave tension, seriousness, and vain vanity beyond the threshold of the “Bat” - the cabaret had its own special laws, enshrined in the Charter of the “Bat”. The text of this unique document has not reached us, but it can be assumed that the spirit of the charter came to life in it Thelema Abbey , which read: do what you want.
In the cabaret, the hierarchical barriers that separated people in official life were broken down; here the masks necessary for everyday life came off. “The faces that we are used to seeing as important and businesslike were groaning with spasms of uncontrollable laughter. Everyone was seized by a kind of carefree madness of laughter: the art professor crowed like a rooster, the art critic grunted like a pig. This can only be found at a bustling carnival in Italy or a fun-filled France,” wrote N. Efros. The critic’s last remark thrown in passing, subtle and insightful, anticipated the later thought of M. Bakhtin that the life of artistic bohemia began in Russia century, embodied primarily in cabaret - in the 20th century it turned out to be one of the few forms where the remains of carnival culture were preserved, of course in a narrowed, impoverished form.
Free “outrages” did not exhaust the content of the cabaret pastime. The artists’ relaxed joy and their complete inner freedom were colored with a special lyricism, the hidden poetry of unfettered spiritual communication. The spirit of the Art Theater cabaret was determined by close people who understood each other perfectly, talented, significant people united in the service of true art. That’s why, perhaps, their gaiety was especially sincere and captivating. “We spent the night in the “Bat,” wrote O. Knipper to M. Lilina, “there were only our own people, we were honoring Vladimir Ivanovich... From the old guard there were Luzhsky, Moskvin, Alexandrov, Burdzhalov and me only. A military band was playing... in the corner near the curtain a throne was erected for the heroes of the day... It was pleasant that there were no strangers. They sang glory. Baliyev made a good joke. Zvantsev read poetry at Karamazov. Everyone warmed up, dispersed, said warm words, remembered Konstantin Sergeevich; Vladimir Ivanovich lavished his attention on everyone, sat with everyone, talked with them, got drunk, was as sweet as anyone had seen him for a long time, conducted the orchestra, even walked with a lezginka... The Bulgarian sang some wild native songs, another played the piano, whispered in one corner Koreneva with Luzhsky about a new role, Deykarkhanova flirted with Tarasov, Koonen with Tezavrovsky they danced the oira, Bravich the mazurka...”
Actually, what happened in “ bat ”, were not representations in the usual sense. Performances for them, as a rule, were not specially prepared; light improvisations - accompanying actor's gatherings and feasts - were not intended for strangers. Here everyone - or almost everyone - had no idea about him a second before his performance, electrified by the previous performer, he took off onto the stage slightly raised above the floor, and then, after his improvisation, returned to the common table. In the cabaret, the spirit of artistic competition came to life again, that excitement of cheerful competition that once brought together ancient singers, musicians, and storytellers for creative battles. Kabotin, who had been savagely expelled from the walls of the theater-temple, was again revived in the actors. (This was the attitude of the directors and actors towards the Moscow Art Theater.) The concert here returned to its original meaning: competition.
Someone brought to the stage of “The Bat” the fruits of independent creative efforts, finding a way out for those artistic possibilities that were not used in the performances.
Here, talents were discovered that no one even suspected, often even their owners themselves - the authors of talented improvisations.
The life of impromptu songs born in the cabaret lasted only those few moments while they were being performed. Something was later recorded, but it turned out to be completely different - the improvisations were alive only in the cabaret atmosphere and died with it.
But the actors cared little about the ephemerality of their cabaret creativity. Not because it was something frivolous for them, not worth attention. Improvisation helped create what was the soul of the cabaret: the atmosphere of celebration spread throughout the hall, the freedom of casual communication.
And yet, for many actors, the Die Fledermaus was something much more important than just a place for carefree pastime. Creative pranks and free play with forms took the actors beyond the usual means of expression and established professional techniques. Here L. Sobinov, the idol of Moscow, the romantic Lensky, sang comic Little Russian songs, funny dressed up and made up, played hilariously in Dargomyzhsky’s popular duet “Vanka-Tanka”; here V. Luzhsky performed with couplets, O. Gzovskaya - with chansonettes, I. Moskvin foolishly conducted a comic Russian choir, and K. Stanislavsky, introducing himself as a prestidigitator, showed the wonders of white and black magic - he only used his hands to remove the shirt from “anyone who wanted it”, without unbuttoning his jacket and vest. Of course, these numbers were performed as a parody and a special poignancy arose from the fact that the simple tricks of a provincial magician were demonstrated by the great Stanislavsky, and one of the best and most significant actresses of the Art Theater, O. Knipper, portrayed a grivoise chansonette.
Actors However, they not only mocked simple pop verses or farcical tricks - they indulged in unbridled acting with pleasure, immersed themselves in artless art that required special virtuosity - different from that in modern everyday psychological theater. Improvisation returned actors to the roots of theatrical art.
The world of cabaret is a special world, where its own laws reign, governing the behavior of people, their relationships with each other, where everyone acts in an unusual role, in a role unusual for him; a world that demonstratively emphasizes its difference from outside life. And yet cabaret is connected in a special way with “daytime” life and art. Special because this connection is negative, parodic.
In “Die Fledermaus,” almost all the “greats” of the Art Theater, starting with Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Knipper, discover the gift of stage caricature. V. Luzhsky had extraordinary talent. His famous travesty “shows” of F. Chaliapin, L. Sobinov, K. Khokhlov were described by V. Kachalov, himself an outstanding parodist. “Vasily Vasilyevich,” writes Kachalov, “of course, had neither Chaliapin’s bass, nor Sobinov’s tenor, nor Khokhlov’s baritone, in general there was no real singing voice. But with what excitement we listened to these singers from the lips of Luzhsky, in his broadcast. How incredibly wonderfully he was able to convey Chaliapin’s power, Sobinov’s tenderness, and Khokhlov’s beauty of timbre. And here we no longer laughed, here we only thanked Vasily Vasilyevich with excited smiles and approving nods of our heads. We didn’t laugh because it happened that, at our requests, according to our “orders”, V.V. would “give” Chaliapin - in “Boris Godunov” or “Mephistopheles”, or Sobinov in “Lohengrin”, or Lensky.
He will begin, joking and chuckling, slightly exaggerating the sweetness of Sobinov’s pianissimo, suddenly he will hook the “living Sobinov”, give a hint of the sound of his unique timbre - and immediately everyone around will hold their breath and Vasily Vasilyevich continues to sing “Sobinov on mute” seriously and excitedly. Also, joking and mischievous, he will begin to parody Chaliapin - “And you, flowers, with your fragrant, subtle poison,” parodically emphasizing these double and triple “m” at the ends of words - this famous Chaliapin "stampik", but when V.V., having reached the point of "and pour into Margarita's heart", began to inflate in Chaliapin's "seeeerdtse", he was suddenly truly captured by Chaliapin's temperament, a wave of spontaneous Chaliapin's power rolled in."
The uniqueness of “Die Fledermaus” lay in the fact that it ridiculed, first of all, the theater within which it was born. The Moscow Art Theater's "distorting mirror" - that's how "The Bat" was called - was directed at its theater. “This semi-mysterious animal,” wrote one of the regular reviewers of “The Bat,” wrote a few years later, “trained by the young Moscow Art Theater actor N. F. Baliev, bared his sharp teeth and made fun of his patron, the Art Theater, in evil parodies, poisonous and well-aimed jokes.”
“Performing evenings” of the Moscow Art Theater cabaret always opened with parodies of the performances of the Art Theater - “The Blue Bird” (1909), “Anatema” (1909), “The Brothers Karamazov” (1910), “The Living Corpse” (1911), “Hamlet” (1911) ) etc. Moreover, the premieres of cabaret “satire dramas” immediately followed their prototypes. It even happened that skits were played the night after the first performance. In 1909, “Russian Word” reported: “On September 19, the Moscow Art Theater will open with “Anatema” by Leonid Andreev, in “Die Fledermaus” on the same evening after the main performance, “Anatema” will be performed inside out” (this time the intention was not carried out: the premiere of “Anatema” ", as is known, had to be canceled at the request of the Synod. In the previous year, 1908, "Die Fledermaus" played its "Blue Bird" a week (October 5) after the premiere of Maeterlinck's play (September 30).
According to all the rules of travesty and burlesque, the “laughing double” adopted everything that was possible from his original: in his “Blue Bird” the same 7 pictures, arranged in the same order as in the Moscow Art Theater performance (he even restored the scene “in the cemetery ", shortened in the stage version of the play at the Art Theater); The parody of “Anatema,” like the performance itself, consisted of a prologue, five scenes and an epilogue, repeating, of course in a grotesquely inverted reflection, the structure, details, and rhythmic structure of the original.
The texts of these parodies have not survived, which is no coincidence. They did not pretend to be literary. These are instantly recorded impromptu, full of improvisational spirit, hastily collected jokes from inside theatrical folklore, responses to events that occupied this moment theatrical and near-theater Moscow. They followed the life of the Moscow Art Theater and were designed for one single performance.
Yet there is a sense of purpose in the Die Fledermaus skits. The objects of their comic adaptations became one of the main “lines” of the Moscow Art Theater in those years - the “line of symbolism and impressionism,” as Stanislavsky defined it, which found fruition in the performances “The Blue Bird,” “Anatema,” and “Hamlet.”
“The Bat” arose during a rather difficult period in the history of the Moscow Art Theater. Theater directors undertook experiments in the field of other theatrical expressiveness, trying to take theater beyond the already familiar “Chekhovian” acting techniques and production decisions or expand the range of their influence on non-domestic forms of theater. Many actors did not understand and did not accept these quests.
Here, to some extent, the acting conservatism, the desire to strengthen oneself in familiar techniques and the quite understandable resistance of the “Chekhovian” actor to the sometimes alien demands of the directors were revealed. "TroupeX.T. “I met the production of “The Blue Bird” with very hostility,” recalled A. Mgebrov, “the actors were angry that they were forced to portray some inanimate objects. There was no end to the irony and ridicule. But they were there quietly, somehow from around the corner.” The actors were irritated by the ecstatically intense nature of symbolist performances - Hamlet, Anathema.
The parodies of “The Bat” played a kind of role as “satire dramas” and served as the valve through which the destructive energy of discontent came out.
One of the cabaret evenings, organized in the fall of 1909, was entirely dedicated to “Anatema”. First, “in the form of an introduction, N. Zvantsev read the “libretto” of the play, compiled with great wit. There was Homeric laughter in the tavern the entire time this joke was being read.” The parody of the play, which after the introduction was performed in puppets by its author and sole performer N. Baliev, was built on some details and phrases of Andreev’s play wittily translated into cartoons - in the last picture of the parody the shadows of Byron, Goethe, Hugo, Lermontov, Voltaire creep towards Andreev and many others (from whom, as the parody hints, the author borrows) “and cry: give us what is ours, give back what you took.” After the parody performance, narrators spoke: Maly Theater actor V. Lebedev “summarized the idea of the play from the point of view of a merchant who saw “Anatema”: “And this is the kind of lizurt I received,” the merchant philosophized, “I should never give it to the poor””; writerV. Gilyarovsky, conveying the impressions of a man who, by chance, thanks to his acquaintance with a stagehand, ended up at the rehearsal of “Anatema”: “And this same Anathema stands, huge, all iron, terrible,” the man narrated with sacred horror, mistaking the guard-angel for Anathema. Gilyarovsky, however, parodied not only the inexperienced viewer, on the contrary: simple-minded sanity ironically set off the pomposity, pretentious mysticism of Andreev's tragedy.
“Hamlet” by Nikita Baliev, played at another “performing meeting”, touched on those key points around which disputes flared up both in the Art Theater itself and on the pages of newspapers: the famous Craig screens, the gold-filled courtyard of Claudius and V. Kachalov - Hamlet. The evening began with an introduction written by Lo1o (L. G. Munshtein, editor of the weekly "Ramp and Life"). Vakhtangov, made up as Kachalov as Hamlet, imitating his voice with incredible similarity, read the monologue “To be or not to be”... to Craig’s screens. “Kachalov complained that he had to play Hamlet the Craig style behind screens; he recalled with bitterness how he played in Kazan, how he felt, how he wanted.” After Vakhtangov’s performance in The Bat, a comic performance began (unlike the previous ones, which were staged with puppets, Hamlet was performed by young artists from the Moscow Art Theater and the Adashev School). On a tiny stage sat Claudius (played by an actor in Stanislavsky's make-up) and Gertrude (actor A. Barov in the guise of Nemirovich-Danchenko), dressed in sparkling robes and crowns in the shape of a samovar and a coffee pot. The explosion of laughter that the reviewer writes about is quite understandable: in one of the articles about “Hamlet” in the Moscow Art Theater it was written that Claudius and Gertrude in their golden robes resemble the above-mentioned household items. The same technique of realized metaphor was used to create the posters that were hung, as always, on the walls of the cabaret. They depicted the successive transformation of a Tula samovar and a teapot into a king and queen. Craig's screens were parodied by canvas cubes - extras sat in them, and at the most inopportune moments they began to randomly move around the stage. The parody was very evil. “Craig had enough time to feel the wings of the Bat, which hurt him painfully.” The parody ended with a “funeral word”, which was pronounced by the actor portraying Fortinbras - A. Stakhovich. After the parody, as usual, there were separate numbers, V. Lebedev, on behalf of his constant hero - the merchant - shared his impressions of “Hamlet”; B. Borisov and N. Baliev, in costumes and makeup, boys and girls sang couplets about “Hamlet” to the tune of the children’s song “There are two hens on the street.”
The themes of the parodies of “The Bat”, of course, were not limited to ridicule of symbolism. With cheerful excitement, the cabaretiers attacked all the obvious and implicit opponents of the Art Theater. In one of the paintings of Letuchymyshin's "Blue Bird", wandering in the "land of memories", Tyltil and Mytil found themselves in... the Maly Theater. “How are you kids?” - asked the “malotheatrovsky” grandparents. “Yes, every evening it’s sold out,” answered the Moscow Art Theater children. “What is this, kids? We won’t even remember this.” In the film “Night”, among all the horrors, the most terrible was theatrical criticism. Moscow newspapers were represented by “stoeros trees” hostile to humans, the trunks of which - ribbons with the headlines of periodicals - ended with crowns - portraits of the theater columnists of this newspaper. (The audience recognizes them instantly: each of those sitting in the hall knows each of them well by sight.) The trees sway and make noise, argue about the merits of the Moscow Art Theater “Blue Bird,” plot various intrigues with reviewer pens, revealing their bestial temperaments; they explain their reluctance to give Tiltil and Mytil success based on very vulgar and banal considerations - “because then there will be no sweetness with them.”
The parody performances that began after midnight, with dashing mischief, overturned what was surrounded by reverence and reverence during the day - here the authorities fell head over heels, given over to blasphemously cheerful reproach. Well-known and respected people became comic heroes in parody reviews, quotes from symbolist dramas, philosophical tragedies were used to discuss matters of purely everyday, human, all too human.
In the parody “The Brothers Karamazov” (consisting of episodes named the same as in the Moscow Art Theater), in the scene “Over the Cognac”, instead of Dostoevsky’s characters (but in their guise), they peacefully sipped cognac, discussing the right to the first production of “The Living Corpse” (this delicate issue was being exaggerated everywhere at that time), A. Yuzhin and Vl. Nemirovich-Danchenko; The scene “Another Lost Reputation”, where Chaliapin was depicted in the costume of Mephistopheles, who was chasing the “Tyrolean cows” - the chorus girls of the Bolshoi Theater - who were running away from him, hinted at an incident that happened to F. Chaliapin and became the talk of the town in newspapers.
The grotesques, travesties and burlesques of Die Fledermaus, which turned the Moscow Art Theater's productions inside out, gave their patron a merciless test - a test of viability. After all, the “exposure of the technique”, which occurred involuntarily in the parody, for the Art Theater as a psychological theater should have been tantamount to death. But the parody of the art of the Moscow Art Theater could not cause any damage. The essence of the art of the Art Theater, its core remained undestroyed. Moreover, the constant presence inside the theater of its parody double, the sly mockingbird, proved that this was a living theater, capable of constant renewal, that its core people were young and full of creative strength. Laughing at themselves is a sign of their spiritual health. At the Art Theater, as V. Shverubovich astutely noted, they did not like what they could not laugh at.
The spirit of the comic in The Bat was determined by an atmosphere of festivity, full of creative joy and freedom.
The “mouse” did not place itself outside the ridiculed phenomenon, did not lose spiritual contact with it. This is precisely the difference between her parodies and many other parodic forms that rapidly emerged on Russian soil at the beginning of the century.
“Mouse” did not stay in the basement of Pertsov’s house for long. The spring flood in 1908 was stormy. The Moscow River overflowed its banks and flooded the refuge of cabaretieres. When the water subsided, they saw that the painting, stage and furniture were destroyed. The basement had to be abandoned. “Bat” moved to new premises in Milyutinsky Lane.
The “official opening” of the cabaret of the Art Theater took place here on October 5, 1908.
The evening began with the famous parody of the “stupid circus” described by K. Stanislavsky in the book “My Life in Art”. Stanislavsky himself played the role of a circus director in it. “I appeared in a tailcoat,” Stanislavsky wrote, “with a top hat worn on one side for chic, in white leggings, white gloves and black boots, with a huge nose, thick black eyebrows and a wide black goatee. All the servants in red liveries lined up in trellises, the music played a ceremonial march, I went out, bowed to the audience, then the chief horseman handed me, as expected, a whip and a whip (I studied this art throughout the week on all days free from performances), and a trained stallion, portrayed by A. L. Vishnevsky, flew onto the stage.”
But the score of the director’s role, preserved in the Moscow Art Theater Museum, written by Stanislavsky’s hand, allows us to see that this act did not concern the circus, which was only a comic device for parody, but the Art Theater itself: the barriers over which the trained horse, Vishnevsky, jumped, indicated the names of the Moscow Art Theater’s performances .
The comedy of the parody arose from the travesty likening of the Art Theater to a circus, its performances to circus barriers, actors to dumb trained animals, and the head of the theater to a formidable director. Was there not a hidden hint in this about the “tyranny and bourbonism” of the leader of the theater, about which the actors “secretly, from around the corner” grumbled?
The cabaret parodies of the Art Theater thus had a therapeutic effect: they brought out - and thereby removed - hidden conflicts.
It can be said that the parodies - without any conscious intention of their authors - were aimed at preserving and preserving the living soul of the Art Theater, just as at the end of the triumphal processions of the ancient Roman generals there were soldiers who scolded and made fun of the heroes in every way - only to curse them with laughter and save them from the envy of the gods. Let this comparison not seem forced and too academic, far from the simple fun of an actor's theater. For in the intimate art of cabaret - let us once again refer to M. M. Bakhtin - the ancient traditions of ritual laughter were paradoxically resurrected, in accordance with which festive blasphemy is part of the sacred rite.
Only in this context can the parody at the anniversary of the Art Theater, shown two weeks (October 27, 1908) after the celebrations dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater, be understandable. The parody anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater in “The Bat”, step by step, almost literally repeated the one that took place on October 14 on the stage in Kamergersky.
On the miniature stage of the cabaret, an exact copy of the stage of the Art Theater on that significant day was presented. Just like there, a gray-green curtain, pulled back to the back of the stage, served as the backdrop for the anniversary performance. Just like there, chairs were placed near the stage for Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Only the atmosphere that reigned here was completely different. On October 14, M. Savitskaya wrote about the anniversary celebration, when Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko “appeared in the hall, our choir and almost everyone who was here began to sing “Glory” and showered them with flowers. And such tremendous excitement overwhelmed us that we cried like children. Vladimir Ivanovich and Konstantin Sergeevich kissed and hugged everyone and also could not hold back their tears.”
At the anniversary at the Bat, tears came from continuous laughter. Everything that was touching and spiritually sublime at that anniversary was noticed by the parodists and repeated with mocking laughter. Instead of a soaring seagull, they attached a sprawling black bat to the curtain. Instead of solemn and respectable representatives of theaters and various cultural institutions, “deputations” took place before the anniversaries from ... the “Union of Moscow Bath Attendants”, who recognized in the leaders of the Art Theater their brothers who care about spiritual purity just as they care about physical purity; from the "Poultry Society", which highly appreciated the theater's activities in the field of bird breeding - the taming of such a gentle bird as the "Seagull", the capture of the "Blue Bird", although it noted the failure of turning the "Wild Duck" into a domestic one.
If at the solemn anniversary actors from different theaters read serious poetry and prose, opera singers sang a whole cantata in chorus, then here the famous doctor performed a dashing chansonette. Instead of Chaliapin, who on that solemn day sang a musical joke specially written by S. V. Rachmaninov for the anniversary, in which the church motif “Many Summers” was elegantly combined with the accompaniment of I. A. Sats’ polka to “The Blue Bird,” actor N. A. Znamensky and, hilariously copying the great singer, performed a humorous musical greeting-letter to the hero of the day from Sats. “There was a lot of accurate and even evil,” recalled N. Efros, “but talent and artistry so gilded all the pills that their bitterness seemed pleasant.”
The Bat will organize parody anniversaries throughout its short history.
Here the hero of the day was not glorified, no incense was smoked for him, on the contrary, he was bullied, showered with a hail of ridicule and familiar jokes. At the celebration of L. Sobinov (1909) - one of the regular participants in the evenings of “The Bat”, V. Luzhsky read a greeting from the Moscow Art Theater, written in a deliberately ugly style like Trediakovsky. The evening in honor of B. Borisov - an artist of the Korsh Theater and a permanent participant in the “performing meetings” of “The Bat” - began with the unveiling of a monument to the artist.
When, to the sound of a carcass, the cover was pulled off, a huge, scene-sized image... of the hero of the day's bald head was revealed underneath it.
The atmosphere, far from solemnity, that reigned at the parody anniversaries did not in the least detract from the merits of the hero of the occasion. Against. The parodic decline tore the official uniform of state anniversaries to shreds. Solemn words and lofty feelings, “worn out and compromised,” as B.I. Zingerman wrote on another occasion, “in their serious and official existence, having passed through a gauntlet of buffoonish blows,” were revived to a new life, “rejuvenated and preened.” One of the journalists wrote about the parody honoring of O. O. Sadovskaya: “Through the joke and laughter, a warm, deep admiration for the great artist broke through (or it would be more accurate to write this: thanks to the joke and laughter), expressed in humorous veiled words, ironic music, it sounded more fully than in all solemn doxologies.” Parody destroyed, debunked not genuine idols, but attacked cliches and falsehood, inflated swagger. She released sincere feelings, testing them with laughter, and returned real values, passing them through the crucible of the comic, to their former shine.
The soul of the cabaret was one of its main founders, Nikita Fedorovich Baliev, a born entertainer and cabaretiere.
“The round face smiled broadly, closely mixing good nature with irony, and one could feel in it the joy of something still new to him, preserving all the exciting charm of his original creativity.
Happy are those who guessed their calling,” N. Efros wrote about him. Baliyev, however, did not immediately guess his calling.
A gifted amateur, an ardent admirer of the Art Theater, who was friends with its actors, in 1907 he was accepted into the Moscow Art Theater troupe. The story of his invitation to the Art Theater is also unusual. When in 1906 the theater went on its first European tour, two young men - the Moscow rich man N. Tarasov and his distant relative N. Baliev - followed their favorite theater, moving with it from city to city. And in the evenings we sat together with the actors in the famous cabarets. The artistic success of the Moscow theater was enormous. But the fees could not cover the gigantic expenses associated with the tour. To return home, the theater needed a sum that there was nowhere to get. And then Tarasov gave 30 thousand rubles indefinitely and without interest. In gratitude, the theater directors invited him to join the Moscow Art Theater's shareholders, and Baliev was first accepted as secretary of the directorate, and after a while - into the troupe.
However, his acting fate in the theater was not happy. He failed one after another in the small roles assigned to him, “discovering,” as V. Luzhsky believed about Baliev’s role as Kister in “Brand,” “a complete lack of dramatic talent.” His talent really did not suit the theater - not just the Artistic Theatre, but any kind. His talent was exclusively for variety. His appearance did not lend itself to any makeup. Through any of its layers a completely round, cunning face with sly slitted eyes appeared, barely looking at which the audience, no matter what was happening on the stage, already began to have fun. “My face is my tragedy,” Baliev wrote in despair to V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, seeking the role of Purikes in Andreev’s “Anatem,” “there’s a comedy going on - they say Baliev can’t be given (Bobchinsky) - he’ll kill the whole theater, there’s a drama going on - Same. I'm starting to tragically wonder why God punished me so much.<...>. I will play the role of Purikes<...>and maybe I will be able to: show you tragic humor in this role. Believe me once in your life, dear Vladimir Ivanovich, otherwise, by God, my situation is tragic. Either a southern accent or an overly comical face. What to do? Shoot? Especially if you love theatre. I believe, Vladimir Ivanovich, that this year you will give me a role. By God, this is necessary. I will not disgrace you, dear, dear Vladimir Ivanovich. Moreover, a good episodic role is yours. You promised it to me, and I know you keep your word.” Such a letter could shake the heart of any person. And in any other case, Nemirovich-Danchenko’s heart would probably have trembled if it had not been for the art of the Art Theater. If Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko had been a little less demanding and strict, the theater would have acquired a mediocre dramatic actor for a long time, and the stage would forever have lost one of its most talented directors, the artist who became the founder of Russian entertainer.
The role of Purikes, which Baliev worked hard for, never got to him. In Anathem he played an organ grinder. “Ramp and Life” immediately published a photograph of Baliev in this role. She did this, most likely, not because the organ grinder was a great achievement of the artist, but because by this time Baliev, as the entertainer and main cabaretie of The Bat, was becoming one of the most popular people in Moscow.
Luzhsky, in response to Baliev’s complaints about Purikes, promised him that he would be engaged in the play where “his comic gift, resourceful jokes and paunch would suit him.” Having already mastered the lessons of art theater quite well, Baliev understands that this is a diplomatic refusal. Gradually he begins to realize that he has nothing to do at the Moscow Art Theater. He had a role where he had already used his data - Bread in “The Blue Bird” (it is curious that many years later another future entertainer, M.N. Garkavi, would play the same role). Funny and not very good-natured Bread rolled across the stage in a bun on short legs. His role turned into an insert number; in the general performance he played his own little performance, hopelessly standing out from the ensemble. He tried to attract attention with all sorts of tricks and various funny techniques, trying to prove that his “comic gift, resourceful jokes and paunch” could be useful in the Art Theater. He argued so diligently that Stanislavsky, as L.M. Leonidov recalls, “one day, as if by chance, asked Baliev if he liked the circus.
“Oh yes,” Baliev answers.
What about clowns? - asks Stanislavsky.
I love it,” continues Baliev.
It’s obvious, you’re a complete farce...”
However, this characteristic, deadly for a dramatic actor, was almost praise for a variety actor. Theater was not Baliev's calling. He was born for the stage. Only here he turned out to be talented, bright and interesting. He couldn't play different roles. But then all his life he brilliantly played the only one - the owner and entertainer of “The Bat” Nikita Baliev. Everything that bothered him in the theater became not only appropriate but necessary here. And a characteristic face that was instantly remembered, and a unique personality.
Baliev did not fit into the rigid framework of a rehearsed, verified and forever-built performance. An unknown force tore him out of the measured course of the performance, pushing him to the front of the stage face to face with the audience, one on one with the viewer. He was by nature a soloist actor, a “one-man”, here, on the spot, in front of the public, creating his own performance, independent of anyone and not connected with anyone, all parts of which are fluidly changeable, subtly mobile. Improvisation performance. It is no coincidence that his gift as an entertainer was discovered at impromptu fun evenings. He supported, slightly directed, the general course of fun, while simultaneously dissolving in it. It was at these evenings that the techniques that would be included in the arsenal of artistic means of the future entertainer were spontaneously born. “His inexhaustible fun, resourcefulness, wit - both in the very essence and in the form of presenting his jokes, courage, often reaching the point of insolence, the ability to hold the audience in his hands, a sense of proportion, the ability to balance on the border of daring and cheerful, offensive and playful, the ability to stop in time and give the joke a completely different, good-natured direction - all this made him an interesting artistic figure of our new genre,” K. Stanislavsky wrote about him. Baliev’s success as an entertainer grew in inverse proportion to his success as a dramatic actor. The day of the “performing meeting” of the cabaret or the annual “cabbage show” had barely passed, which, as L. Leonidov wrote, N. Baliev came up with on Monday in the first week of Lent to organize at the Moscow Art Theater, where “he showed a lot of wit, ingenuity, taste,” where “Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko with the entire troupe and workshops surrendered themselves to him,” Baliev again found himself out of work. His position in the theater became worse and worse, he was hardly featured in performances - in the 1911/12 season he played two small episodic roles, one without words. There was no hope for any changes. “Maybe, in fact,” Baliev wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko shortly before his departure, “the Art Theater, where fate pushed me, is not my theater. I'm rude and unintelligent to him. And then, no matter how hard it is, no matter how ideals crumble, you have to make up your mind and leave - before they say: leave, we don’t need you, and this can also happen.”
Baliev had long been ripening plans related to “The Bat”. All that was left to do was last step. And Baliev does it. In the spring of 1912, newspapers reported for the first time that as of the next season, Baliev was leaving the Moscow Art Theater troupe and organizing a large cabaret with wide access to the public.
This is essentially what everything was leading to. Back in 1910, the cabaret began issuing tickets, they were called merchant tickets - they cost from 10 to 25 rubles and for now were bashfully called countermarks, and were distributed through notes among friends. But the trouble began - at first, only slightly opening the doors to the outside public, it was soon forced to throw them wide open. And already in 1911, the journalist sadly noted that “the best places are occupied by representatives of the largest commercial firms in Moscow. But there is neither Stanislavsky, nor Nemirovich-Danchenko, nor Knipper.” From being a haven for artists, The Bat has become a commercial enterprise. The evolution of the Moscow cabaret was no exception. This was a natural and logical path that all cabarets - Russian and European - followed sooner or later.
The history of the artistic cabaret of the Art Theater has ended.
The history of the miniature theater “The Bat” began.
" - a pre-revolutionary theater of miniatures, one of the very first and best chamber theaters in Russia, which arose from the parody and comic performances of actors of the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Nikita Baliev.
Initially, “The Bat” was conceived as an intimate artistic circle of Moscow Art Theater artists and their friends - a community of actors of the Moscow Art Theater.
Theater enterprises must focus on the audience and sell tickets, otherwise they will go bankrupt. But the Moscow Art Theater actors wanted to hide from prying eyes in a cozy place where they could come after the performance and relax from academic theater traditions and the outside world. The creation of this kind of club became a necessity for an actor's retreat, where in a narrow circle one could review performances and, with gentle irony, write a couple of sketches about one's favorite theater.
The idea of creating an acting club was not designed for the public, but for its complete absence. Actually, the public should not see their theatrical characters in everyday situations.
The “closed” club included actors from the Art Theater: Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Vasily Ivanovich Kachalov, Ivan Mikhailovich Moskvin, Georgy Sergeevich Burdzhalov and Alisa Koonen.
The charter of the “Bat” circle was submitted for registration to the city presence, which was later reported by the newspaper “Russkoye Slovo”.
This charter was signed by Nikita Baliev, Nikolai Tarasov and Vasily Kachalov. 25 actors became co-founders, and another 15 members of the club were proposed to be elected by voting. But this plan "failed." It was precisely the closedness that attracted attention, as soon as Baliev announced that “this will be a club of the Art Theater, inaccessible to others, and it will be incredibly difficult to become a member,” soon “completely extraneous elements poured in” and the “supposed” intimacy of the theater was destroyed . The basement was filled with bohemian musicians, artists, writers and regulars of Moscow theaters.
“When the need for a special hall for young people became clear, a basement room was added, which at one time housed a circle of artists of the Moscow Art Theater called “The Bat,” which held its closed intimate meetings at night after performances. The soul of these meetings was N. F. Baliev, who later organized his own troupe for public performances of “The Bat,” which soon became so popular in Moscow. To set up a dance hall, I deepened the room by an arshin and laid oak parquet to prepare the asphalt." - the owner of the house later recalled"
On February 29, 1908, Baliev and Tarasov went down into the dimly lit basement of Pertsov’s house (opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior). A bat flew out towards them. This is how the name of the theater was born, and the bat became its emblem, parodying the Moscow Art Theater seagull on the curtain.
Thus, there was a need for the birth of a theater club, and the prospect of its development was revealed later. The theater creators didn’t even think about it.
In the theater of miniatures, the duration of the action is calculated in minutes, not hours, and in his ten-year biography, Nikolai Efimovich Efros brought to the present day the history of the evolution of the chamber theater "The Bat" from the moment the idea of creating an acting club appeared in 1908, until its heyday, when it became an artistic and theatrical attraction in a city choked in revolutionary chaos.
“The Art Theater is the most serious theater, with heroic tension, in the seething creative forces, solving the most complex stage problems. But the actors of this theater - and great love for humor, great taste for jokes. They always loved laughter. “The Bat” should give a way out for this; these are the moods, thoughts and goals with which N. F. Baliev and N. L. Tarasov, having grouped their theater comrades around themselves, rented a basement and hung a bat from its gray vaulted ceiling. The resting place of people is a kingdom of free but beautiful jokes, and away from the outside public.”
N. E. Efros wrote in the biography of the theater, published for its tenth anniversary, 1918.
Tarasov’s aesthetic taste was especially close to the compressed eclectic forms of “small art.” The brilliantly educated co-owner of oil fields and a cotton factory in Armavir was an aristocrat in spirit, and Tarasov was a poet at heart. He loved brightly lit halls, in which he always chose a dark corner. He loved the war of witticisms, but he himself was stingy with words. This young man simultaneously combined sarcasm, tenderness and sadness, piquancy and understatement. But he was unable to experience the joy of life and appreciate the generosity of all these gifts. Tarasov could easily sketch couplets and compose a “song on the topic of the day” or a poignant epigram. He composed an apt parody of the production of “Mary Stuart” at the Maly Theater and was the author of a buffoonery about the great Napoleon and his missing driver. The comic miniature, in which the public was cleverly fooled, was called “The Scandal with Napoleon, or an unknown episode that happened to Napoleon in Moscow.” Napoleon was cold, he wanted to leave and asked: - Where is my driver? They shouted from the audience: “There were no cars under Napoleon!”
Having realized his dream of his own theater, Nikita Baliev turned the acting cabaret, an intimate club of actors of the Moscow Art Theater, into a publicly accessible commercial theater, at the same time preserving the atmosphere of the former haven of artistic bohemia. Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky began to attend performances. Baliev was a shareholder of the Art Theater and secretary of Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. In theatrical productions, he created several rich images: Bull and Bread in “The Blue Bird” by M. Maeterlinck, Rosen in “Boris Godunov” by A. Pushkin, Guest of Man in the play “The Life of a Man” by L. Andreev. He was very artistic, but for his type of acting roles in the repertoire academic theater was a bit.
The leading actors of the theater were V.A. Podgorny and B.S. Borisov (Gurovich), as well as Y.M. Volkov, K.I. Kareev, A.N. Salama, G.S. Burdzhalov, V.Ya. Khenkin , Doronin (1911/14).
The theater's actresses were N. A. Khotkevich, A. K. Fekhtner, E. A. Khovanskaya, V. V. Barsova, E. A. Tumanova, Rezler, E. A. Marsheva (Karpova), T. Kh. Deykarkhanova, N. V. Meskhieva-Kareeva (Alekseeva), Heinz, Vasilenko
A month and a half later, in April 1908, the water level in the Moscow River rose and the water overflowed its banks. In some of the lowest places in the city center, all basements were flooded with water.
“Two or three warm days in a row and several rains at once promoted the melting of snow and loosened the ice so much that a rapid and high-water flood of the Moscow River was no longer in doubt.”
After the flood, the cozy basement of Pertsov’s house had to be restored, and Baliev’s troupe resumed its performances.
“The Bat lasted one and a half short theatrical seasons in its original premises, experiencing devastation from the raging waters of the Moscow River in the spring.”
For the second season, the theater began its performances at 21:30 in the evening.
The official opening of the “basement” took place on October 18, 1908 with a parody of the Moscow Art Theater’s premiere (October 13, 1908) performance “The Blue Bird,” in which Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky and Nemerovich-Danchenko were looking for this bird. The theater was ready to receive 60 guests, as announced by the Russkoe Slovo newspaper:
“The intimate ‘tavern’ of friends of the art theater opens on Sunday.” - "Russian word"
It must be said that the performance of the Art Theater itself was a huge success. For a whole century, the legendary performance did not leave the stage and was shown at least four and a half thousand times. The author granted the right to use the tale for the first time to Stanislavsky; The design of the performance included a complex lighting score.
In April 1909, the Moscow Art Theater's "Blue Bird" was seen by the St. Petersburg public on the stage of the Mikhailovsky Theater.
“The theater had a festive look. Each picture of Maeterlinck's fairy tale was accompanied by applause. “The Land of Memories” and “The Kingdom of the Future” exceeded all expectations and was recognized by the most strict theatergoers as the pinnacle of stagecraft and art” - “Moskovskie Vesti”
On January 14, 1909, the founder of “Mouse” Baliev was honored at the theater. In the comic parody program, Ms. Yan-Ruban and Mr. Kamionsky sang, Ms. Balashova danced, and Mr. Lebedev narrated skits.
“The Bat” celebrated its one-year anniversary on March 19, 1909, simultaneously with the 20th stage anniversary of Alexander Leonidovich Vishnevsky. Nikita Baliev divided the history of theater into “antediluvian” and “post-flood” periods. Among the guests were V.A. Serov, N.A. Andreev and A.V. Sobinov, who was escorted to Buenos Aires the next day.
One of the “Christmas trees” arranged in the “Bat” cabaret on December 23, 1909, was remembered by the guests for a long time. The evening's program included "The Inspector General," performed by a troupe of puppets, and gifts were distributed for three hours, and the celebration ended at seven in the morning.
On the night of February 9-10, 1910, the theater gave its first paid performance. The first paid performance is in favor of needy theater artists. From that time on, “The Bat” became a night cabaret theater for a paying public. The theater's repertoire included parodies, miniatures, and various divertissements.
On the night of November 5-6, 1910, an evening took place with the performance of Tarasov’s parody of the Maly Theater’s play “Mary Stuart.” Alexander Ivanovich Yuzhin, Vladimir Ivanovich Nemerovich-Danchenko and Felor Chaliapin in the costume of Mephistopheles took part in the staging of The Brothers Karamazov. A quartet joined the action: Leonid Sobinov, Sergei Volgin, V.A. Lossky and Petrov. I read the stories of V.F. Lebedev.
On a gloomy Sunday, November 13, 1910, Nikolai Tarasov relieved himself of the burden of persistent melancholy with a shot in the chest.
“Tarasov is an elegant young man with velvet eyes on a beautiful matte face. He had delicate taste and a happy appearance. Fate was extremely merciful and generous to him. But Tarasov carried within himself a thirst for the joy of life, but could never quench it, could not experience it.”
N. E. Efros
The performance at the Art Theater was cancelled.
After the death of Nikolai Tarasov in 1910, on whose funds The Bat existed, the theater had to earn money on its own.
On March 20, 1911, Humperdinck's opera, translated and staged by Nikolai Zvantsev, was performed. The night was full of fun. At the vernissage, still lifes by Vladimir Tezavrovsky were presented: Baliev in the form of a watermelon, Mardzhanov in the form of a pineapple, Leonidov represented by a melon. Sobinov painted a picture with mustard and soybeans. “Cranberry Revolution” - written by Lebedev.
Since 1912, “The Bat” has become a theater of miniatures with a large program every night, consisting of cartoons, dramatizations of songs, romances, theatrical aphorisms by Kozma Prutkov, miniatures by T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, as well as dramatizations of works by classics: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant. Excerpts from works by Mozart, Dargomyzhsky, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky were performed. The performances were brilliantly commented on by the witty “host of the evening” Baliev, resourcefully talking with the audience and harmlessly touching on the “topic of the day”.
In August 1912, Baliev presented a version of the play “Peer Gynt”, the program for which read: “A dramatic and musical poem in 36 scenes, of which, due to the difficulty of staging, only ten were carried out, the rest either did not pass censorship, or were already staged at the Art Theater theater”, and among the episodes of the production were the titles “At the Trolls” and “In the Madhouse”.
One of the cabaret parodies was called “Theater Review: The Biggest Failures of the Recently Started Season.” This was followed by a caustic parody of Leonid Andreev’s play “Ekaterina Ivanovna” and a parody “Sorochinskaya Elena” - on the premieres of the Free Theater “Sorochinskaya Fair”, directed by K. Mardzhanov and “Beautiful Elena”, directed by A. Tairov, 1913.
Over time, aesthetics and the desire for refined sophistication began to manifest themselves more and more in the theater's programs.
In 1913, the architect F.O. Shekhtel designed the building of the “Scientific Electrotheater” in Kamergerovsky Lane, which provided premises to house the “Bat”. However, the project was not implemented.
The walls of the cabaret theater were hung with caricatures and cartoons on theatrical themes. Above the entrance to the theater hung the inscription “Everyone is considered acquaintances,” and the welcome guests of “The Bat” could sign the famous book next to the autographs of K.S. Stanislavsky himself, V.S. Kachalov, O.L. Knipper-Chekhova, Rachmaninov and Isadora Duncan. The “near-theater audience” immediately fell into the thick of the eventful behind-the-scenes life. As if entering the theater from the service entrance, the viewer made an exciting journey into the world of theatrical scenes, feeling intimately involved in the artistic sphere.
Performances at the Bat began at 11:30 p.m. The audience took their seats, the lights went out, and the actors stealthily walked from the stalls onto the stage. Dressed in black robes fluttering like bat wings, they, in time with the flickering red lights, sang in a whisper: “The mouse is my little bat, the mouse is as light as the breeze.” The public, already involved in the process, felt on an “equal footing” with the famous artists. The impromptu performances of Vera Nikolaevna Pashennaya, Nikolai Fedorovich Monakhov and even Marie Petipa who “accidentally” ended up in the basement of “The Bat” were actually thought out and even paid for by Baliev. Thus, a complete merging of the auditorium and the stage was achieved. Bohemia consisted of businessmen, respectable officials and successful intellectuals who played “artists” and “actors”.
The enterprise switched to a commercial basis, money poured into the budget like a river. Tickets were sold, performances were announced, reviews were published in newspapers and magazines. From that moment on, the atmosphere of a variety show disappeared, there were no tables, the clinking of glasses and the grinding of knives on plates disappeared; and “Die Fledermaus” was transformed into a theater. The entrance fee, at that time, was high, and the buffet served expensive champagne. Baliev's enterprise turned out to be very successful, and soon the capital of the "Bat" company amounted to 100,000 rubles. Thanks to the large number of fans of the cabaret theater and the success of the performances, in 1915 "The Bat" moved to a specially adapted theater with a functional stage, an auditorium and a buffet . The performances were performed in the basement of apartment building No. 10 on Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane, called the “First House of Nionese,” which at that time seemed like a skyscraper.
In the cabaret theater "Die Fledermaus" Kasyan Yaroslavovich Goleizovsky embodied his creative ideas for ballet productions, representing divertissement departments. The first production on the new stage was the comic opera "Count Nulin" to the music of Alexei Arkhangelsky. It was followed by the original production of “The Queen of Spades”, decorated in the minimalist style of symbolism: a card table, light on silk from a lonely candelabra, then a funeral candle, a piece of heavy brocade and “fantasy completed the picture of the hearse and the magnificent coffin”; instead of a ball - shadows, silhouettes waltzing outside the window, dusted with snow.
The repertoire included operettas and vaudevilles. “Fortunio's Song” to the music of J. Offenbach (20-minute miniature, 1918); "Italian salad"; “About the hetaera Melitis” (stylized mystery, 1919); “Lev Gurych Sinichkin” - vaudeville by D.T. Lensky; “What happened to the heroes of The Inspector General the day after Khlestakov left” (parody number); “Wedding by Lanterns” (1919); “The Duck with Three Noses” (three-act operetta by E. Jonas, (1920).
But time gave rise to “a mood of nostalgic sadness for the passing past and tired confusion before an incomprehensible future.”
In the 1920s, Baliev went on a European tour with part of the Bat troupe. Until 1922, they somehow tried to preserve the repertoire, but “Die Fledermaus” died in Russia.
Back in 1918, Efros wrote a wish for the tenth anniversary of the theater:
“Let what happened happen again. Let reality once again surpass all dreams and desires."
Efros, 1918
The cabaret repertoire was a humorous take on Art Theater productions; in his position as a “man from the outside,” which makes it possible to detect with particular acuteness the comedy of phenomena and situations in which the “man from the inside” could see an unshakable pattern. The many-faced actors changed their images and characters several times a day. At first, the repertoire of the “theater of improvised parodies” included humorous miniatures and sketches for productions of the Art Theater. Nikolai Baliev was one of the wittiest entertainers, his reprises created a special brightness of the theatrical evenings of “The Bat”. Then the repertoire was filled with musical and dramatic performances. Productions began to gravitate towards sophistication and elitism, designed for wealthy audiences. The theater lived in its own premises with all the necessary decorator workshops, and the theater already had a permanent troupe.
The repertoire of the theatrical cabaret included miniatures:
“The Blue Bird” (1908, a parody of the Moscow Art Theater play)
Miniature “Clock” - from the collection of French porcelain performed by T. Oganesova and V. Seliverstova
“Under the gaze of the ancestors” - an ancient gavotte performed by T. Oganesova, Y. Volkov, V. Selivestrova
“The Council of Constance” to the music of A. Arkhangelsky and words by A. Maykov, performed by Y. Volkov, A. Karnitsky, M. Efremov, B. Vasiliev, A. Sokolov, N. Sokolov, B. Podgorny
"Treasurer" Scenes based on M. Yu. Lermontov. Participants: Treasurer - I. I. Lagutin, Headquarters Captain - Y. Volkov, Treasurer - E. A. Tumanova
“Zarya-Zaryanitsa” to poems by Fyodor Sologub and music by Suvorovsky. Performed by T. Oganesova, L. Kolumbova, N. Khotkevich, S. Tumanova, A. Sokolov, V.V. Barsova, N. Vesnina.
“Moonlight Serenade”, actress N.V. Meskhieva-Kareeva (N.V. Alekseeva - Meskhieva)
Staged painting by Malyavin “Whirlwind”. “Women”: E. A. Tumanova, T. Kh. Deykarkhanova, L. Kolumbova, V. V. Barsova, V. Seliverstova, A. Sokolova
“The Inspector General”, 1909 (short, easy, concise, apt, evil, witty)
“Mary Stuart” - N. Tarasov’s parody of the Maly Theater play, 1910.
“The scandal with Napoleon, or an unknown episode that happened to Napoleon in Moscow” (about the great Napoleon and his missing driver) - buffoonery by N. Tarasov, 1910.
Staging of “The Brothers Karamazov” (in the play Nemerovich-Danchenko and Alexander Sumbatov sit at a table and drink cognac, with the participation of Fyodor Chaliapin, 1910)
Scenes based on Pushkin’s poem “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai” to the music of A. Arkhangelsky. Roles performed by: Maria - N. Khotkevich, Zarema - T.Kh Deykarkhanova, Khan - V.A. Podgorny
“In the Moonlight” (French song), performed by A. K. Fechtner, N. A. Khotkevich, V. Seliverstova, T. Oganesova, N. Vesnina
"The knight who lost his wife to the devil." A play by M. Kuzmin, in which this wife was played by N. A. Khotkevich, L. A. Gatova, T. Kh. Deykarkhanova
"Russian toy of Posad Sergiev." Music by A. Arkhangelsky. The performance stars A.K. Fechtner, M. Borin, K. Korinct (?)
"Brigan Papa" or "evilly beaten mesalian". Vaudeville by M. Dolinov with singing. Performers: N. A. Khotkevich, I. Lagutin, A. Fechtner, Y. Volkov
“Madame Bourdieu’s Shop” - scenes of a passing Moscow. Actors: N. Milatovich, A. Fechtner, V. Barsova, I. Lagutin, T. Oganesova
“Charity concert in Krutogorsk” - Performers: N. Baliev, E. Zhenin, N. Khotkevich
“Mother”, scenes based on M. Gorky with the participation of V. A. Podgorny in the role of Timur Lench
"Vogdykhan's whim." Based on the story by A. Ronier. Performers V. A. Podgorny, A. Sokolov, Y. Volkov
“Serenade of a Faun” to the music of Mozart, roles performed by V.V. Barsova, E.A. Tumanova and A. Sokolova
“Crocodile and Cleopatra”, in which the role of Cleopatra was played by E. A. Tumanova, then N. M. Khotkevich, V. K. Seliverstova
"Katenka." Forgotten polka of the 80s. The roles were performed by V. V. Barsova, A. K. Fechtner, M. Borin
Opera (?) Humperdinck, translated and staged by Nikolai Zvantsev, 1911
“Peer Gynt” (dramatic and musical poem by Baliev in ten scenes, 1912)
“Sorochinskaya Elena” - a parody of the performances “Sorochinskaya Fair”, K. Mardzhanova and “Beautiful Elena”, A. Tairova, 1913
“Theater Review: The Biggest Failures of the Recently Started Season.”
“Ekaterina Ivanovna” - a parody of the play by L. Andreev, 1913
“Count Nulin” to the music of Alexei Arkhangelsky, 1915.
“The Queen of Spades”, 1915. With the participation of T. Kh. Deykarkhanova
“The Overcoat” by Gogol, in the role of Akaki Akakievich V. A. Podgorny, A. Sokolov, A. Milatovich, Efremov, I. Lagutin, E. Zhenin, M. Borin
“When Russia laughs, the heavens shake with her laughter; when she cries, her tears sweep across the countries like a storm.” N.F. Baliev
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the “Bat” cabaret theater by N. Baliev. The opening took place on February 29, 1908 with a parody of the play “The Blue Bird,” which premiered at the Moscow Art Theater a week earlier. Then the cabaret anthem was performed for the first time:
Spinning the bat
Among the night lights,
We will embroider a motley pattern
Against the backdrop of dull days.
The main rule of the comic charter of “The Bat” was: “Don’t be offended.”
BALIEV, NIKITA FEDOROVICH (real name and surname Balyan, Mkrtich Asvadurovich) (1877, according to other sources 1876 or 1886–1936), Russian actor, director, theater figure. Honorary citizen of Moscow.
Born in 1877 in Moscow (according to other sources in October 1876, Don Army region, or in 1886 in Nakhichevan). From a merchant family. Graduated from the Moscow Commercial (Practical) Academy. During the first foreign tour, the Moscow Art Theater (1906) provided financial support to the theater. In 1906 he joined the Moscow Art Theater as a shareholder and was the secretary of Vl.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. Since 1908 - actor at the Art Theater, played episodic roles: Kister (H. Ibsen's Brand), Rosen (A. Pushkin's Boris Godunov), Man's Guest (L. Andreev's Life of a Man), Bull, Bread (M. Maeterlinck's Blue Bird), Organ Grinder (Anatema L. Andreeva), Leibovich (Miserere S. Yushkevich), Cousin Theodor (Life in the clutches of K. Hamsun), Passerby ( The Cherry Orchard A. Chekhov). Baliev's stage career was hindered by his unartistic appearance. In 1912, Baliev left the troupe, remaining a shareholder of the theater.
He was one of the initiators and participant in the “cabbets” of the Art Theater, from which the cabaret of Moscow Art Theater artists “The Bat” arose: together with the patron of the Moscow Art Theater N. Tarasov and some theater artists, Baliev rented a basement for the cabaret in Pertsov’s house opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The opening took place on February 29, 1908. It was a club for recreation and communication of people of art; V. Kachalov, I. Moskvin, O. Knipper-Chekhova, V. Luzhsky and others performed in the cabaret. In 1909, “The Bat” moved to Milyutinsky Lane, 16. Paid performances were occasionally given here. Baliev hosted a show, sang couplets, and staged theatrical parodies of Moscow Art Theater performances.
Gradually, “Die Fledermaus” turned into an open-air cabaret theater, and performances began to be staged with tickets sold. Baliev invited artists from Moscow and St. Petersburg theaters T. Deykarkhanova, E. Khovanskaya, E. Marsheva, Vl. Podgorny, Ya. Volkov and others to the troupe. The texts were written by L. Munshtein, B. Sadovskoy, T. Shchepkina-Kupernik, the dances were choreographed by K .Goleizovsky, music composed by A. Arkhangelsky, V. Harteveld. In 1912, the theater made its first tour - Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Rostov. Tours to St. Petersburg became annual. In 1914, the theater was located in the Nirnzee House on Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane.
In his productions, Baliev used everyday dances, jokes, puns, charades, riddles, impromptu songs, romances, etc. Baliyev's directorial principles found their perfection in stage miniatures. He staged plays classical works: Treasurer M. Lermontov, Count Nulin and the Queen of Spades by A. Pushkin, Overcoat and Nose by N. Gogol, stories by A. Chekhov, poems by I. Turgenev.
After October 1917, the theater was unable to adapt to the new conditions. Soon after the next anniversary of “The Bat,” solemnly celebrated on March 12, 1920, Baliev went on tour in the Caucasus, and from there with a small group of artists he went abroad. "Die Fledermaus" was revived in Paris. The performances were first performed at the Fellina Theater in Paris. This was followed by tours in Spain and England. Since February 1922, Bali's "Die Fledermaus" toured in New York, followed by performances on the west coast of the United States - Hollywood, Los Angeles. At first the old programs were played. Gradually updating the troupe and repertoire, performing in English and French, the theater toured European countries, the USA, Latin and South America. The Great Depression 1929 ruined Balieva. In 1931, “The Bat” moved to Europe and soon ceased to exist.
Baliev actively participated in the cultural life of Russian diaspora. In Paris he tried to create a “Russian Fairy Tale Theater”. In 1934 he returned to the USA, where he performed as an entertainer in large revues. He made an attempt to act in Hollywood, working in a small cabaret in the basement of the New York St. Moritz Hotel.
LITERATURE
Efros N. Theater “The Bat” by N.F. Baliev. M., 1918
Rakitin Yu. Nikita Fedorovich Baliev. In memory of a friend. – Illustrated Russia, 1937, No. 45–57
Kuznetsov E. From the past of the Russian stage. M., 1958
Tikhvinskaya L. “The Bat.” – Theatre, 1982, No. 3
Bessonov V., Yangirov R. Bolshoi Gnezdnikovsky Lane. M., 1990
Wreath for Baliev. – Moscow Observer, 1992, No. 9
Tikhvinskaya L. Cabaret and miniature theaters in Russia. M., 1995
"BALIEV, NIKOLAY FEDOROVICH" "KRUGOSVET" ® . Encyclopedia 2008
Based on an interview with the director of the cabaret theater "The Bat" Lyubov Aleksandrovna Shapiro-Widova Gurvich, published on December 14, 2000 in the newspaper "Rossiyskie Vesti".
This word is a skit...
Nikita Fedorovich Baliev was an artist of the Moscow Art Theater - his life story is very interesting - once he and his friend, philanthropist Nikolai Tarasov, a famous oil industrialist, came from Rostov. Baliev dreamed of getting into the Moscow Art Theater. His appearance was peculiar - he was small, plump, funny, with a Rostov-Armenian dialect. Naturally, there was no question of getting into the most intellectual theater at that time, such as the Moscow Art Theater. But one day trouble happened at the Moscow Art Theater - they went bankrupt after going on tour, and Nikolai Tarasov said: “I’ll give money to the theater if you take Baliev.” Baliev was taken... Unfortunately, he played only one role - Bread in "The Blue Bird" - he was not given any more roles because of his speech and specific appearance, but once a year he became the king of the Moscow Art Theater - during Lent. On Lent As you know, you can’t eat meat, you’re not supposed to work either, but you always want to have fun.
The artists of the Moscow Art Theater had a lot of fun.
Beginning in 1902, Baliev made so-called “novkap”, that is, New Year’s skits, and also skits for Easter. The word “cabbage maker” itself did not come from the Moscow Art Theater; it was introduced by Shchepkin, at shows of the Maly Theater. But nevertheless, it stuck with the Moscow Art Theater.
The Easter holidays were truly unique; their description, which exists in the Bakhrushin Museum, is simply amazing. During their performance, the following orders were given: Kamergersky should be surrounded by mounted police, as the crowd poured in, dreaming of getting to the theater for these holidays.
How to chop cabbage
The jokes that existed then now simply seem unfunny or, I would say, vulgar. Baliev had a favorite joke, for example this: “Sobinov was punished so that he would not crawl around Coralie.” Sobinov was a famous singer, Coral was a famous ballerina. The situation was that the ballerina was the mistress of the Grand Duke, and Sobinov was not disgusted by her either. But when he sang in Bolshoi Theater, he was shown his place. And such a simple joke appeared, which enjoyed incredible success in Moscow and has even survived to this day.
Flapping your wings...
Gradually it became clear that the skits that are done at the Moscow Art Theater are turning into an independent action, and do not just remain actor’s get-togethers. And Baliev created a Club in Zamoskvorechye - the closed acting Club "Bat" - as a counterweight to Chaika. From 1908 to 1912 they were in Zamoskvorechye, and when the Neerensee house was rebuilt, they moved there.
The fate of Tarasov
Baliev's friend Nikolai Tarasov also had a strange, typically decadent fate. He was very beautiful man, but for some reason he thought that women liked him because of his money. Although, looking at him, it was difficult to imagine. He had a mistress - a woman of the world, who, in turn, had another lover - either a cornet or a cadet, who once lost. She came to Tarasov with a request to pay off his gambling debt. Tarasov replied that the request itself was absurd and that it was unrealistic. “But do you understand that he will shoot himself?” she asked. “Let him shoot,” was the answer. “Then I’ll shoot myself,” she said. “Okay, then I’ll shoot myself...” Tarasov answered. And they all shot themselves on the same day.
Baliev, who was informed of Tarasov’s death during the performance, rushed from Gnezdnikovsky Lane to Bolshaya Dmitrovka. There is a description of how he flew there, but, unfortunately, he was late. Tarasov died at the age of 28 and was buried in the Armenian cemetery. There was an absolutely stunning monument, such a strange sculpture of Andreev: a helpless figure, a helpless young face, very tragic, very beautiful. During the war, the then head of the Moscow Art Theater removed it on purpose so that it would not be melted down for tanks, and some time ago the “Bat” received a call from the Moscow Art Theater and was invited to the opening of the monument. Just like many years ago, there were two wreaths on the grave - one from the Moscow Art Theater and one from the Bat. The monument was re-opened with the same composition.
Dorm with Mice
Baliev, unlike the very handsome and rich Tarasov, was a very realistic person. He believed that life was given to a person to live it. This is probably why all the actresses of “The Bat” were either his wives or mistresses. He was picky about Russian women, but he loved Armenian and Jewish ones... The whole troupe lived in the same Neerensee house, which had hotel-type apartments, without kitchens, with buttons with which food was called up, in the same house there was a workshop... and a rooftop cinema.
Relations between LM and MHT
Baliev's success was enormous - it must be said that the Bat, unlike the Moscow Art Theater, never went bankrupt, moreover, Baliev, after his departure abroad, saved the Moscow Art Theater from another economic crisis - he saved them from a failed tour. Stanislavsky believed that the whole troupe should go on tour, and the extras too, since every person in the troupe is important, and even the actor voicing the grasshopper must know the biography of his character to the seventh generation..., so they traveled in a composition of no less 100 people. It is clear that under any conditions this is madness, but, nevertheless, Stanislavsky went for it. Without burning out creatively, they burned out economically.
Baliyev's fate
Baliev's fate turned out to be tragicomic. One fine morning, realizing that there was nothing waiting for him here in Russia, he left... First, to his place in Rostov, to say goodbye to his sister, to whom he left as a souvenir his bowler hat with money - either Kornilov’s or Denikin’s. ..
And one fine morning the troupe woke up and discovered that the other half of the troupe, mainly its female part, led by Baliyev, had sailed to Constantinople. They left for Paris, where they were already called "La shouve sourrie" - "The Bat", and it must be said that they worked quite successfully in Paris and with great success toured on Broadway. The end of Baliev’s life story was told by one elderly actress - Faina Georgievna Zelinskaya-Kalkanya, one of the actresses of “The Bat”, who sang the then famous “Katenka”. This is what she said: “You know, Baliev was a gambler and played on the stock exchange. And he lost. And he died of frustration at the age of 60-something. This year the theater ceased to exist. The actors... someone returned home , someone remained there. But the “Bat” ceased to exist.
There is an absolutely stunning American booklet where both Melanie Griffith and Charlie Chaplin left their (rave) reviews of the theater. Of course, the theater’s repertoire remained Russian, Russian.
Mr. Baliev's influence on the cabaret genre
Baliev raised this genre to a unique, unprecedented height. He was engaged in creating not only such unique divertissements and funny parodies, in which both Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko took part, where Vakhtangov staged his famous “Tin Soldiers”.
Baliev staged both “The Queen of Spades” and “The Nose” by Gogol, now it would be very interesting to see it in this small room - after all, it was a special spectacle, a box, its own special world. Baliev came to the conclusion that cabaret is a special view of the world of free, ironic, smart person. Actually, this is what Baliev’s theater was like in its time, and this is what Grisha tried to make it like. History, as we know, does not repeat itself twice or repeats itself in the form of a farce; this same history repeated itself partly in the form of a tragedy.
Poster for tours in Paris. 1926 Artist - M. Dobuzhinsky
Scenery sketch for the number "Date" Artist - S. Sudeikin
Sketch of the backdrop for the number "Christmas" Artist S. Sudeikin
Noah's Ark at the End of Time.
Publication date: 11/30/2004
Source: Magazine "Antik.Info"
Yuri Gogolitsyn
Our theatrical aesthetes decided to create in St. Petersburg what Paris was famous for, and for many Russian people it served as the main attraction of Paris. I mean the Parisian cabaret, this is what Alexandre Benois said about a new phenomenon in Russia. But Russian cabaret is something special, unique.
And it all began with artistic salons, which included the legendary “Stray Dog” and “Comedians’ Halt” in St. Petersburg, and the Moscow “Bat”. No, these were not ordinary gathering places to drink and relax, not “clubs of interests”, and not a la today’s “parties”. The salons are larger, more voluminous, they are a phenomenon in Russian culture... Those who had never danced in public danced the cancan here, those who did not sing and did not have a voice performed solo numbers, purely “dramatic” personalities changed their roles, “comedians "they boldly tried themselves in tragedies...
The founding father of the cabaret club “Bat” was the actor of the Art Theater Nikita Baliev. The club noisily announced itself in 1908. And what day was chosen for the opening! February 29 is associated with the memory of St. Kasyan - an unloved, even “harmful” saint. The people associated Kasyan with Viy, and the name of the saint was considered “unclean” and shameful. A symbol of trouble, shocking? Not without it. The living embodiment and mascot of the salon was the young graphic designer Saryan, born on Kasyanov’s day.
At first, entry to the cabaret was free, but unexpectedly great success, and then the war, made visiting the cabaret paid. Participants in artistic “mockery” moved from “amateurism” to professional activity. Cabaret theaters became commercial enterprises - evenings with mini-performances turned into burlesque scenes, the level of which was determined by the level of invited actors, musicians and design artists. The phenomenon developed rapidly, but a revolution broke out, and the winds of change carried Baliev to Paris.
Here he managed to do what many actors and directors who settled in the French capital had tried to do - organize a Russian cabaret theater with the old name “The Bat”. Baliev signed a contract with the Parisian theater "Femina" on the Champs-Elysees. The organizational period fell on October-November, December was marked by the first program.
The performance was truly historic. Everyone was amazed - both Russian emigrants and spoiled French. Nikita Baliev, a Moscow joker-entertainer, took the stage and in fluent, but deliberately broken French, with barbs and hints, began to announce numbers that followed one after another with amazing variety and contrast. Paris has never seen anything like it!
In The Bat, only the preface to the play was based on a joke. Despite the fact that each scene did not last long, all its elements - dances, reprises, music, pantomime, excellent design - were subtly thought out and formed a single whole. We will not practice epithets, we will give the floor to the eyewitness. Elegant and subtle, precise in words and caustic in her assessments, poetess and feuilletonist Nadezhda Teffi: “Give Baliyev a page from the telephone book - he will order music for it, select scenery, dances, select actors - and you will see what kind of thing it will turn out.”
It is curious that the popularity of “The Bat” depended not only on the authors, but also on... Russian artists, their characteristic enthusiasm, ridicule, buffoonery, even mockery - subtle and intelligent. Baliev understood this well and, unlike Diaghilev, did not look for designers among the French.
Baliev’s main assistant was Sergei Sudeikin, who conquered Paris on the “first run.” Against the backdrop of its decorations, frozen artists in the form of dolls or sculptures were placed, beginning to come to life only with the first chords of music. Having performed simple movements, they again froze in their original poses simultaneously with the completion of the accompaniment. This is exactly how the Marquis and Marchioness of Sudeikin acted from the miniature “The Clock”. The same thing happened in other sketches - “Chinese Porcelain”, “Lucky”, “Russian Toys”. Or the delightful “Sayings of Great Men,” where Henry IV, Richard III, Louis XIV, and many others came to life. Everywhere there is grotesque, mockery, gayer lightness, kitsch.
Sudeikin, with great tact, but not without humor, introduced the French to the “low-income” way of life in Russia, which was dear to the Russian public. The emigrant artist Lukomsky attributed a significant part of the success of the cabaret theater to decoration: “Pictures of Russian bygone life... full of bright colors, the taste of life, which now evokes in us here, in a foreign land, pleasant memories that touch the soul, like a sweet dream, magical.”
The audience was already waiting for the second program of “Die Fledermaus”. The amazing “cocktail” of the new numbers intoxicated and excited, beckoned and made people fall in love. There was a dramatization of the romance “The Black Hussars” with the actor Mikhail Vavich, the unforgettable “Bakhchisarai Fountain”, spicy and fabulous in an oriental way... Theater chroniclers - Notiere, Lunier Poe, Antoine, Brisson, Jean Bastiat - vied with each other in word creation and laudatory reviews .
Sudeikin was not a monopolist in the new enterprise. There was enough space for everyone. Thus, caricaturist and funnyman Nikolai Remizov used the style of Russian folk popular print to caricature the design of the miniature “Song of the Prophetic Oleg.” His design of the “Parade of Soldiers” attracted particular interest from the public. The actors in this act imitated the “puppet” movements of an inanimate toy. Live actors, dressed in uniforms, acted out marching toy soldiers on stage. Wide canvas trousers concealed movement. Pure mechanics and the iron will of the puppeteer-Baliev? Not at all. Without the talent of the actors, nothing would have happened - only they could convey both the puppet's stiffness and parody. The idea is well executed. And again a resounding success!
At one of the April concerts, Anna Pavlova and Sergei Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky and Lev Bakst, Konstantin Balmont and Alexei Tolstoy found themselves in the hall together... Isn’t this an assessment of the level of performances! The new program of the cabaret theater was very eventful. Baliev made new sets and costumes for the miniature “The Death of a Horse”, the short story “Minuet” after Maupassant, for “Trio” to the music of Mozart, and the number “Easter”, accompanied by music by Rimsky-Korsakov, was directly connected with the breadth and diversity of the Orthodox holiday.
Over the next few years, the “Die Fledermaus” troupe toured Europe and the USA, arousing great admiration from audiences in England and Scotland, Monaco and, of course, in French theaters. The success was so enormous that even “counterfeits” of “The Bat” appeared. Maestro Baliev is in constant creative search and makes a lot of efforts to expand the capabilities of the cabaret. The unsurpassed Nikolai Benois appears, who for the number “A Soldier’s Love” creates scenery with the Neva embankment, the Senate and Admiralty buildings, and a stylized outline of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Among the masters is Vasily Shukhaev. He designs the scenes “Pastoral”, “Return from Bethlehem”, “Picnic on the March”. 1926 Baliyev receives powerful reinforcements in the person of Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and his son Rostislav, who arrived from Berlin to Paris.
The repertoire of “The Bat” is being updated almost completely. The pantomime based on Andersen's fairy tale "The Swineherd" was designed by Dobuzhinsky Sr. The dramatization based on the caricature of Wilhelm Busch went to the younger one, who surpassed his colleagues by making parts of the scenery on the stage movable and changing before the eyes of the audience. Among the unexpected new products were “Platov’s Cossacks in Paris in 1815” and “Russian Wedding”. No less unique is Verdi’s La Traviata, staged especially for... “non-fans” of classical operas.
Emigrant Russia remembered and loved Baliev not only in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, but also in Paris, London, Zagreb, and New York. His theater was the heir and custodian of the theater experience silver age, a precious piece of an irrevocably lost Russia.
A brilliant expert on Russian theater, Prince Sergei Volkonsky, essentially summed up the theater’s activities in exile: “Yes, The Bat was born in 1908, but its main life and its fame grew after the revolution, in exile, during wanderings, during wanderings around abroad, as our nannies once said. And this gives it some kind of special burning sensation. She, this burning sensation, is free from any sensual regrets and mourning; obviously free, since foreigners feel it too... That is why the spirit that blows in this theater is close to us. That’s why the very exaggeration of the images... it blossomed in magnificent colors from the Russian root.”