Gondola ride – Newspaper Kommersant No. 217 (7418) dated 11/23/2022

The main event of the Diaghilev. PS” turned out to be a very interesting exhibition. Open until spring 2023 at the site of the Museum of Theater and Musical Art, in the Sheremetev Palace, the exposition is entitled “Love for Three Oranges: Casanova’s Venice – Diaghilev’s Petersburg”. Her intention is appreciated Sergey Hodnev.

Venice celebrated its 1600th anniversary last year. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Diaghilev. Comparing two anniversaries (especially if you remember that Diaghilev rested on San Michele, the Venetian island of the dead) seems to be such an obvious idea that even comments are not needed.

But here the whole question is where to expand this comparison: initially, it was assumed that Canaletto and Pietro Longhi, natural Venetians, whose paintings would be brought from Italian collections, would reign at the exhibition. In the spring of this year, however, it became clear that no foreign works would be brought to St. Petersburg. Curators Arkady Ippolitov and Natalia Metelitsa were forced to urgently change the concept of the exhibition – and as a result they came up with a coherent exposition about how the Venetian “settecento” (that is, the 18th century) enchanted our Silver Age. Moreover, they filled it with things of the first row from the main domestic collections and important nuances from private collections.

The exhibition has four sections (“Venice in St. Petersburg of the Silver Age”, “Harlequins of the Silver Age”, “Riding to the Island of Love: an Experience of Life Creation”, “Masquerade. Sunset Time”), called “acts” – which is logical. The main line is connected precisely with the theater – the “real” theater, as in the case of Meyerhold’s production of Lermontov’s “Masquerade”, amateur theater, which gathered the most illustrious people of artistic Petersburg in the 1900s-1910s, and theatricalization of the inimitable life of salons like Vyacheslav Ivanov’s “The Tower”. Hence, in particular, a luxurious selection of theatrical sketches by Benois, Sudeikin, Sapunov.

But still, the coverage here is extremely wide – up to the recreation of the legendary cabaret “Stray Dog” and “Comedians’ Halt” sung by countless memoirists: and here there are Venetian overtones. And in general, the harlequinade, the masquerade, the cheerful decadence of the “Most Serene Republic” of the 18th century turn out to be the keys to almost any great phenomenon of the Silver Age. Even Blok with “Puppet Show” and “Snow Masks”, even Akhmatova with a huge space between “We are all thugs here, harlots …” and “A poem without a hero.”

It’s amazing in its own way. Russian culture has always been fascinated by mythologized cities, which in themselves are more than some kind of geographical and urban reality: they have the power of some primordial ideal, and if this ideal is projected onto domestic reality, then one can try to see some symbolic meanings in it. But most often it is some kind of third Rome or a new Jerusalem (well, or, let’s say, Potemkin’s visions of ideal policies in the Northern Black Sea region) – that is, these meanings roll into either big politics or big historiosophy.

It’s not that no one outside of Russia tried to create “their own” Venice, at least in a fleeting way, but what did France do, for example? Lifeless Versailles entertainment with gondoliers ordered from the real Venice. The tradition of masquerades at the Paris Opera with Venetian dominoes and a somewhat mournful suspense of courtship of one mask after another. And, of course, all the imagery of the commedia dell’arte from Watteau to Verlaine. This is not so little, and honesty requires acknowledging that it was through French hands that many “Venetian” topoi reached our tradition.

And now the domestic dream of Venice is sweet, partly armchair, partly bohemian, but not at all secondary and certainly devoid of any big “adult” background. The artistic society itself came up with its own myth, dressed it up in fantasy clothes. However, as the exhibition shows, it is precisely in this very myth that the great thing that the Russian early twentieth century should be proud of is rooted – Blok, Benois, Akhmatova, Kuzmin, Meyerhold. Diaghilev, finally, on whose tombstone it is written that Venice is “the eternal inspirer of our reassurance.” But still, without her and the restless slogan “surprise me!” it certainly wouldn’t have happened either.