How is the reconstruction of the family home of Vakhtangov in Vladikavkaz going?

It is hot in Vladikavkaz at the beginning of autumn, like in Moscow in summer. The house made of red brick, with its facade overlooking the swift Terek, has already freed itself from scaffolding and building grids. The yellowish color from the facade and the sign of the cafe on the ground floor called “Turandot” disappeared, as did the cafe itself. Now the original noble terracotta color has been returned to the facade.

– What is happening here today, what stage of work? I ask Kirill Krok, director of the Vakhtangov Theatre. Once a month with specialists for one, maximum two days, he flies to Vladikavkaz. This time he arrived with the chief artist of the theater Maxim Obrezkov.

– All the main works on the construction of walls, supports are completed. Finishing work is already in full swing: you see, ceilings and walls are being painted over. Let’s go look.

Through the wooden gate, historical and already restored, we get into a small courtyard. This included high school student Zhenya Vakhtangov when he returned home from the gymnasium, where he was considered a local celebrity. But not because he went to excellent students, but because from childhood he showed artistic abilities, he was especially prone to parodies and imitations. In the memoirs of his contemporaries, there are records of how the whole class literally died of laughter when Zhenya showed the math teacher – voice, manners exactly the same. The teacher just entered the classroom at that moment. I was stunned either by the strength of the talent of the parodist, or by his impudence. As a result, the parodist was punished.

Where until recently everything was littered with construction debris, cleanliness. On the ground floor, according to the plan, there will be an art cafe, or, more precisely, a chamber theater hall, which not in everything, but in many respects mirrors the art cafe in the Moscow theater. First of all, in terms of its internal structure – tables for a hundred seats, a small stage and backstage with a dressing room. But the color of the interior is somewhat different: not cobalt, but a kind of green, like the historical one in the theater foyer. Moreover, the frames have already been ordered in green color scheme and part of the wood trim too. By the way, the frames on the windows of the first and second floors were restored according to two miraculously preserved ones. According to the director, all communications have already been established, so that the shower and the washing machine for suits can be used. There is also an area for unloading scenery.

“There are no premises of this format in Vladikavkaz yet,” Krok continues his tour. – This site will work every day, and two or three times a week there will be concerts and theatrical programs organized by the artists of the Vakhtangov Theater and local artists.

By the way, six rooms for 12 people have been prepared for guest performers on the second floor. But we haven’t gone up there yet.

Needless to say, time and people did not spare the Vakhtangov family home: from the original, there are only two facades, two windows and an entrance door. The facades have been restored, and on one of them they show me, not without pride, a fish tail. The fish tail has nothing to do with aquatic vertebrates – this is how local builders call a little trick of historical brickwork, and it looks like this: one cobblestone was placed between two rows of bricks and poured with cement, thus saving on expensive bricks. In the century before last, it was produced from local clay by the plant of the German Baron Shtenberg. Two such “tails” have been preserved on the walls of the Vakhtangov House. The builders sandblasted them, varnished them and left them for everyone to see.

According to director Vakhtangovsky, the biggest surprise during the reconstruction was the need to adjust for seismic hazard.

“When the specialists and I entered the house and began to examine the walls and foundation, we came to the conclusion that only the walls should be left, and a reinforced concrete “stool” should be inserted inside. At the slightest seismic vibration without such a “stool”, everything inside will collapse and develop like a house of cards. Therefore, they deepened the foundation pit, cast the foundation, made a tightening belt and already re-erected the ceilings with supporting reinforced concrete columns. So between the first and second floors, between the second and the attic there are reinforced concrete floors.

On the stairs, which do not yet have railings, we rise to the second floor – it is called “memorial”. It is dedicated to the family of the manufacturer Bagration Vakhtangov, who has a wife and three children – two girls and a boy. The boy was to become the heir to the capital, the hope of the family. He did not live up to expectations – he devoted his life to the theater.

Sunlight, which in September is still abundant in Vladikavkaz, literally floods the second floor. It is ready for painting and is a suite of rooms. But how do they correspond to their historical location? After all, it is known that practically no documents, plans for the house have been preserved.

“Indeed, nothing has been preserved, so in our actions we were guided by the windows and the facade,” says artist Maxim Obrezkov. – The facade is divided into five parts, and we assume that this is how many rooms there were in the Vakhtangov House. It was decided that the office of the father and the room of his only son should be located here without fail.

– But did you somehow take into account that there was a very difficult relationship between them, almost a break?

– Yes, that’s why the rooms are separated, located in different wings of the house.

Difficult relationships – this is putting it mildly, there is a conflict of generations. The father is gloomy, always busy at the factory. It is clear that he, as a man of action, was irritated by the frivolity of his son. He has in mind theatrical circles and performances that no one needs, playing the mandolin … When Eugene had already moved to Moscow and got married there, his father cursed him. True, after some time he nevertheless forgave and received in his house the young people who came once a year to Vladikavkaz. But at family dinners, judging by the memoirs of Yevgeny Bagrationovich himself, there was no particular joy. The father wrote to his son: “I am alone, there is no one to help me …” And at that time the son staged vaudeville in Moscow, worked in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Needless to say, family drama…

Maxim Obrezkov continues:

“Father’s room should be more sober, and we’ll pick up antique furniture from that period in it, it will be upholstered in maroon. But here’s the thing – the house itself dictates how it should be formed and what it should be saturated with.

And here is the common dining room of the Vakhtangov family, and two rooms are given over to a multimedia story. Photographs, texts by Vakhtangov, memories of his contemporaries will be projected on light walls. And on the multimedia panels installed right there are the riddles of Princess Turandot. An interactive table-panel is about to appear, on which it will be possible to add “fragments” of photographs into a single picture. And these photographs, by the way, are not random, but thematic – from performances, recognizable faces.

So, a little more than six months remain before the opening of the Vakhtangov House. Next week, furniture makers and upholsterers are leaving for Vladikavkaz, they will take measurements in order to make furniture for part of the residential area and for the art cafe. In the residential area they have already begun to hang chandeliers, old ones, of course. Maxim Obrezkov is convinced that antique furniture, of course, can and should be looked for, but, as his practice shows, it will find its own way to where it is needed. In this case, the road to Vakhtangov’s ancestral home.

Confirmation of this was found exactly a month ago, when relatives of the first performer of the role of Princess Turandot Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova called the theater on the Arbat and said that they were donating the actress’s office to the theater. So the bureau, sofa, armchairs, interior items are already packed and ready to go to Vladikavkaz, where the room of the first performer of the role of Turandot will appear in the House.

And the last thing I saw in the Vakhtangov House was a restored large spacious veranda adjacent to the memorial area. Its traces cannot be found either on the plan or in the documents, but the former residents of the communal apartments remembered it and told the architects.