White nights of Venice

On November 2, the premiere of the performance “White Nights of Venice” will take place on the stage of the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics. The premiere date was not chosen by chance: the project is dedicated to the memory of Luchino Visconti, who was born on November 2, a director who managed to combine two great cultures – Russian and Italian. This is a story about a fleeting but fateful meeting. About a moment that can turn the usual course of life.

At one time, the magic of St. Petersburg and Venice inspired Visconti to create film masterpieces – “Death in Venice” and “White Nights”. It was these two great works of Thomas Mann and Fyodor Dostoevsky that became the basis of the new performance.

… Two fascinating, mystical cities, two great civilizations – Russian and Italian, two languages, sound equally in the performance. The main thing for the creators was the study of the human soul, the cosmos of human consciousness, the problems of loneliness, the knowledge of beauty, love, life.

The artistic director of the project, producer and performer of one of the main roles is the Honored Artist of Russia, actor of the Vakhtangov Theater Vladislav Demchenko.

“I always wanted to work with stage designer Svetlana Konegen,” says actor Vladislav Demchenko. We are great friends with her. During the pandemic, we talked on the phone every day – Sveta lives in Italy, I live in Moscow, but both were born in Leningrad. It was during these conversations, during this disunity, that an idea arose: what if two great cities, St. Petersburg and Venice, are connected on stage? I thought that if we are going to rely on classical literature in the performance, then the only thing that could be combined in this case is “White Nights” by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and “Death in Venice” by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann. Since this all started. A few years ago, the project was a dream, the boundaries of its implementation seemed blurred, were unclear. But then the young playwright wrote an original work that really captivated me.

Some great Russian writer – the viewer can only guess whether it is Dostoevsky or Brodsky – being in a creative crisis, he leaves for new impressions in Venice.

Here he meets an Italian Dreamer who is in love with his city. The Italian communicates with the houses, canals, palaces of Venice, as with living beings. In fact, this is the same Dreamer, which is so well written by Dostoevsky. Such Dreamers, after all, are everywhere, some even consider them city madmen, but in fact they are simply in love with their beautiful world.

For me, the task of how to make St. Petersburg and Venice come to the fore in our production became very important. Indeed, the whole of St. Petersburg, all this incredible beauty was created by Italians – Domenico Trezzini, Carl Rossi, Bartholomew Rastrelli. And in Venice, in turn, there is the famous Russian pavilion of Alexei Shchusev, in Venice, at the cemetery of San Michele, our Joseph Brodsky, Sergei Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky are buried …

When I met Marco (Italian actor Marco Dinelli – corr. note) and told about my idea, he asked me: “Do you remember that Visconti once shot both of these works on film?” I remember well the film “Death in Venice”, but that Visconti also filmed “White Nights” with Marcello Mastroianni in the title role, I somehow forgot … At that moment I realized that our performance would take place, and we would dedicate it to the great director Luchino Visconti.

My hero the Writer is the embodiment of the very complex philosophical thoughts of Thomas Mann himself. It is even physiologically difficult for an artist to pronounce them, and even more so to convey them to the audience as an actor. The character is going through a major internal transformation. A man in crisis, he comes for new experiences in a strange city, which he has always dreamed of. And it is there that he realizes that he lived a far-fetched life, boiled in the world of books. Books created his closed world, although it was thanks to them that he became famous. But the hero did not see real life around him. In Venice, the Writer meets a strange man who first of all asks for his autograph, they begin to talk. And then he also falls in love for the first time in his life with a strange woman. No, he was previously married, but he truly fell in love, passionately, only here. The feeling makes it free, removes blinders, gives the feeling of flight. But it turns out that his friend is also in love with a woman – the same one. Thomas Mann writes the wonderful words “The one who loves is closer to God than the beloved.” Very important words.

Since the performance “White Nights of Venice” is a dialogue between two great cultures, it is completely natural that both Russian and Italian artists play the main roles in it. The story of Thomas Mann will come to life in the Russian performance of Vladislav Demchenko, and the story of Fyodor Dostoevsky will be performed by the Italian artist Marco Dinelli.

“I love Dostoevsky’s prose very much,” says Marco Dinelli, “I was lucky that I play the Dreamer. In this character itself, in my opinion, there are the beginnings of Dostoevsky’s more powerful heroes – Prince Myshkin, for example.

We wanted to show two very similar cities – Venice and St. Petersburg. The meeting that takes place in the play is not just a meeting of two different characters, but also a meeting of two cultures. Italy in the world is more associated with expressiveness, with intimate life, and St. Petersburg is associated with mentality, with a more rational human principle. That is, for the viewer, in parallel, there is a meeting and interpenetration of two cities and two human principles – the romanticism of the Dreamer and the rational thinking of the Writer. During the performance, they turn into each other a little, acquiring the part that each of them lacked to become a full-fledged personality. The hero of Vlad Demchenko acquires a romantic view of the world, and my hero acquires decisiveness, the ability to act.

Curiously, I play my part in two languages. After all, I have been living in Moscow for a long time, since the end of 1996, so I also feel a certain Russian-Italian “hybridity” in myself. Poetic romanticism, enthusiasm, emotions – this is all my hero conveys in Italian, but then they are replaced by reflections, philosophy, and the Dreamer switches to Russian. My own duality is partly reflected in this character.

Naturally, such a play requires an unexpected director’s decision. Leyla Abu-al-Kishek, director of the play “White Nights of Venice”, also understands this very well. Leila, by the way, staged performances at the Vakhtangov Theater. The audience remembers them – this is Frida. Life in color”, “Nijinsky. Brilliant Idiot”, “Promise at Dawn”.

– Venice and St. Petersburg, – says the director, – two cities on the water, both with a romantic history. These are the cities of lovers, mysterious, enigmatic, foggy. The story itself is quite universal, it could happen anywhere, so for us the main thing is what exactly happens between the characters.

Dostoevsky and Mann are very different authors, but they also have something in common. The hero of one is poor and unknown, the second is socially accomplished, very famous, but at the same time both feel longing. Both are alone. They do not live in the “here and now”, but rave about either their dreams or their books. And both are waiting for a fateful meeting, as a result of which everyone begins to live for real. It seems to the viewer that it is the woman who will have to turn their lives around. But this is not entirely true: a woman gives them an experience of love that they never had, but the experience of real spiritual human closeness is much more important to them. Heroes discover that love is a feeling that is inside. And it doesn’t matter how the stories of their relationship with this particular girl end up. It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky’s wonderful text sounds in the play: “My God! A whole minute of bliss! Isn’t that enough even for the whole life of a human being?

The mysterious Stranger in the play is played by actress Sidney Wichitodomini (Italy).

“We don’t know who she is, this Stranger,” says Sidney Wichitodomini. – After all, very often we are for others what exists only in their imagination. We think that we know a person, but in fact we just come up with some kind of image for ourselves with which we are trying to communicate, hence the misunderstanding. A person often simply cannot manifest himself as he is, because others are not able to recognize him outside the framework of their imagination. This is what happens with my character. What does the Stranger bring to the lives of heroes? Perhaps that it eliminates their illusions about themselves and the world. The cover falls off. And both understand that they should look at the world differently than before.

It seems to me that this will be a very interesting performance that combines different stage techniques. We have an unusual video sequence, combined in a special way with acting. When the concept of the performance was explained to me, it was very exciting: we often see animation and theater separately in projects. And then there will be some figures that move across the screen of the city, and then go straight from the streets to the stage – this is very interesting. The text itself in these stories would not, it seems to me, be so voluminous if it were not for this wonderful directorial move.

I also wanted to separately mention the costumes of our artist Victoria Andrianova, the head of her own Fashion House. My character, for example, will change clothes so that the Stranger looks like a completely different person every time. In this performance, everything is very harmoniously conceived.

The Russian-Italian theater project “White Nights of Venice” was created with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. Assistance in the creation of the performance was provided by the general director of the Snezhet company, philanthropist Vitaly Yavelsky. The Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper is the media partner of the play.

Elena Bulova.

Photos provided by the press service of the project