ABSTRACT

In the late 17th century, when the French professional theatre was at its zenith and England and Spain looked back over several generations to the heyday of their theatre, drama in Russia first tottered into official existence. Wishing to please his new wife and mark the birth of their first child (the future Peter the Great), Tsar Alexei ordered the court performance of a play, the biblical story of Esther, entitled Artaxerxes. This was the same tsar who, in 1648, had decreed the destruction of all musical instruments and theatrical properties, with severe punishment for anyone using them. Now, in 1672 (when Paris was watching the premiere of Racine’s Bajazet), the stilted, day-long play received royal approval, and the German producer Johann Gregorii (1631-73), was encouraged to form a small Court Theatre. The enterprise began well, extolling the Monarchy and glorifying the Christian Church as instructed, but it staged only nine productions and fizzled out in less than three years. This miserable false start, ill-conceived, artificial and un-Russian as it was, typifies the desultory beginnings of the Russian theatre, which would not achieve any real stature or permanence for nearly another century. Its early story is one of sporadic outbursts in various directions, followed by persecution, indifference or uncontainable competition from foreigners.