ABSTRACT
In 1893, Stanislavsky had attended the première, at Aurélien LugnéPoë’s Théâtre de l’Oeuvre in Paris, of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Inspired by Chekhov’s interest in the work of the Belgian dramatist and by his own increasing dissatisfaction with naturalist stage forms, he turned to drama of an overtly ‘symbolist’ character. For the opening of the Theatre’s seventh season on 2 October 1904, he chose to stage three plays by Maeterlinck. Employing the services of a designer other than Simov for the first time, he turned to a young St Petersburg artist, V.Suren’yants, who made models of settings for all three plays.
