Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2002 - 22

The year 1934 began pleasantly for
Leningrad audiences. On 22 January,
Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
(also known as Katerina Ismailova) premiered successfully and was subsequently performed thirty-six times in five months. Later
that year, in early September, the Moscow
meeting of the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers changed the course of evolution of
Soviet art by ratifying socialist realism as the
only acceptable artistic style in a Socialist society. John Bowlt described the effect this had on
Soviet art and artists:
The ratification of socialist realism as
the only artistic style acceptable to a
Socialist society and, hence as an international style, together with the several
subsequent decrees that attempted to
abolish "formalism" in the arts, led directly to its exclusive application in the
U.S.S.R.; and although this led, in turn,
to a standardization of form and content, there is no doubt that the portraits of official celebrities, the industrial and collective farm landscape, the
scenes of the Red Army and Navy were
immediately intelligible and achieved a
lasting popularity among the masses.
(Bowlt 1988, 291)
Discussions about this period of Soviet
culture necessarily coincide with the rise of
Josef Stalin. The eradication of the various art
collectives and associations and simultaneous
establishment of official Soviet art unions reflected Stalin's efforts to control the flow of images and ideas seen by the masses.
In 1936 when Stalin walked out of the
Moscow premiere of Shostakovich's popular
opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, critics duly
noted Stalin's unspoken reaction. The opera
was reviled in Pravda the next day and banned
shortly thereafter. Shostakovich himself was
spared, but the implications were clear for Soviet artists. The next two years witnessed the
wholesale infliction of Stalin's will on his
people known as the Great Terror. The Stalinist
purges of the thirties ended the short, sharp
post-revolutionary period of artistic experimentation in Russia. Mandatory adherence to
state approved dicta meant a return to more
conservative, traditional and optimistic representations and also spawned a renewal of interest in ethnography. A quick comparison of
Tatiana Bruni's designs for Bolt and those executed for The Bells of Kornevll (fig. 3)
(1938), Emelian Pugachev (fig. 21) (1942)
and The Imaginary Bridegroom (fig. 22)
(1946) illustrate her successful adaptation to

Fig. 16. Moishe Levin. Costume sketch
of Lobastov in Death of Pazukhin.

Fig. 18. Tatiana Bruni. Costume sketch
of the American Fleet in Bolt.

the requirements of the time. The detailed elegance of Bruni's sketches attest to the skills
that kept her opera and ballet designs in view
of Leningrad audiences for sixty years.
Another designer whose work exemplified a pragmatic approach to his time was
Nikolai Akimov (1901-1968). Akimov had
been a disciple of another Russian theatricalist
director, Evgenii Vakhtangov (1883-1922).
Trained as a stage director and designer,
Akimov's controversial, formalist designs for
the Vakhtangov Theatre's (Moscow) 1932 production of Hamlet was removed from the
stage. In 1936, he was named the artistic
leader of the Theatre of Comedy in Leningrad.
His designs for two 1938 productions,
Terentii Ivanovich and Twelfth Night,
adapted to the realistic requirements of the
time. Akimov pushed the limits of the censors

Fig. 17. Moishe Levin. Costume sketch of
Baev in Death of Pazukhin.

Fig. 19. Tatiana Bruni. Costume sketch of the
Dressmaker in Bolt.

Fig. 20. Tatiana Bruni. Costume sketch of
Olga the Young Communist in Bolt.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2002