What do you know about Stanislavski? Stanislavsky Konstantin Sergeevich, biography, life story, creativity, writers, life history

The meaning of the word STANISLAVSKY in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia

STANISLAVSKY

Stanislavsky (stage name of Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev) is one of the largest and most original figures of modern Russian theater. Born in Moscow, January 5, 1863, in the famous merchant family Alekseev. S.'s mother was French, her maternal grandmother was a famous artist in Paris at one time. S. received his education at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. Participating in amateur performances, he prepared for an opera career and studied singing with Komissarzhevsky, with whom and Fedotov (XLI, 887) he founded the Society of Art and Literature in Moscow. Soon he became the director of performances staged by this society. Here the principles of a theater were developed in which not only would the objective situation corresponding to each play be conveyed, but the atmosphere of life would be recreated. In 1898, S., together with the playwright Vlad. Iv. Nemirovich-Danchenko founded the Moscow Art Theater. The artists who became part of the theater belonged to the number of amateurs, members of the society of art and literature, who had already worked under the leadership of S., as well as to the number of students of Nemirovich-Danchenko. New theater opened with A. Tolstoy's play "Tsar Theodore". The first two years his success was very average. New era for M.H.T. began in 1900, after the entire troupe visited Sevastopol and Yalta, mainly in order to introduce Chekhov, who was ill at that time, to his work. The collaboration of the Nemirovich-Danchenko and S. Theater with Chekhov and Gorky determined its further character. He made a number of triumphant trips to St. Petersburg; Its success in Germany and Austria exceeded expectations. The German press ranked the theater artists at the height of the first ensemble in Europe and mainly praised the theater director, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, and the talent of the director, S. The best modern playwrights in Western Europe- Maeterlinck, Hauptmann and others send their plays in manuscripts to M.H.T., considering his productions exemplary. This is the history of the theater, created by the joint creative work of his artistic directors Nemirovich-Danchenko and S. His understanding performing arts associated with realistic theater, such as, for example, the Antoine Theater in Paris or the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. The desire to create the illusion of living reality was brought to ideal perfection in the S. theater. The house in which the action takes place is entirely inhabited; the artist-director complements the author. The stage in S.'s productions is completely separated from the auditorium, in the sense that effects directed at the public are absolutely avoided. The director's work is not limited to the text of the play, but complements the life of the character in the intervals between his lines and behind the scenes. The peculiarity of S.’s productions lies in this behind the scenes life. The development of details has been brought to such completeness that the enemies of S. and the theater he created, in their defense of the old conventions and stage routine, reduce all of S.’s innovations to “crickets and cobwebs” in Chekhov's dramas. This is completely false. S. is, first of all, an artist who sensitively understands the symbolism of everyday details that embody for the eyes and ears states of mind of people. The important thing is not that he gives a lot of details, but that he highlights the most characteristic of them, and thereby transports the audience into the depicted environment. It goes beyond realistic theater and creates an intimate theater of moods. His productions are not “protocols” in the spirit of naturalism, but artistic embodiments spiritual atmosphere of dramas. S.’s great advantage lies in his ability to inspire artists, to unite them with a common understanding, resulting in a harmonious performance in which there is no hierarchical division into main and minor roles. Defenders of the old, conventional theater reproach S. for destroying the originality of the actors, but this reproach is factually refuted: S.’s theater gave the stage first-class artists, such as Kachalov, Moskvin, Knipper and others are recognized both here and abroad. At the same time, S. knows how to breathe life into the performers of even the smallest roles, and this creative work on the acting crowd serves as polemical material for the enemies of the M.H. theater. S.'s talent as a director was expressed most perfectly in the productions of Chekhov and partly Gorky. The Moscow Art Theater is predominantly Chekhov's theater, which created a whole world on the Russian stage where tenderness and sadness reign. In the same range of intimacy associated with inspired realism, there are Ibsen's "Wild Duck" and "Doctor Shtokman", and Hauptmann's "Mikhail Kramer". As an actor, S. reveals a strongly expressed individuality. Not all roles are equally successful for him. Shakespeare's heroism does not resonate with his artistic temperament; Brutus in Julius Caesar is far from satisfying. He is all in the fluctuating shades of new art; his strength lies in his ability to depict the hidden spiritual world; his best role- Doctor Astrov in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya". All the beauty of Chekhov's world, in which cynicism is only a mask of tenderness insulted by life, is recreated here by S. with inimitable artistry. Another side of his talent - the ability to draw human psychology with the smallest everyday details - is reflected in his "Doctor Shtokman"; he turns Shtokman's external flaw - his myopia - into a symbolization of his inner world and creates with captivating conviction the image of a naive idealist. Of the many other roles of S., the most notable are Vershinin in “Three Sisters”, Kramer in Hauptmann’s play, Satin in Gorky’s play: “At the Bottom”. Zin. Vengerova.

Brief biographical encyclopedia. 2012

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what STANISLAVSKY is in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

STANISLAVSKY in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
(real name Alekseev) Konstantin Sergeevich (1863-1938) Russian director, actor, teacher, theater theorist, honorary academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1925; honorary academician of the RAS ...
STANISLAVSKY V Encyclopedic Dictionary Brockhaus and Euphron:
(stage name of Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev) is one of the largest and most original figures of modern Russian theater. Genus. in Moscow, 5...
STANISLAVSKY in the Modern Encyclopedic Dictionary:
STANISLAVSKY in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
(real name Alekseev) Konstantin Sergeevich (1863 - 1938), director, actor, teacher, theater theorist. Stanislavsky's activities had a significant impact on Russian...
STANISLAVSKY in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
STANISLAVSKY (real name Alekseev) Const. Ser. (1863-1938), director, actor, teacher, theater theorist, honorary. acad. RAS (1917), rev. acad. USSR Academy of Sciences...
STANISLAVSKY in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedia:
(stage name of Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev)? one of the largest and most original figures of modern Russian theater. Genus. in Moscow, 5...
STANISLAVSKY in Lopatin’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
Stanislavsky, th: system...
STANISLAVSKY full spelling dictionary Russian language:
Stanislavsky, th: system...
STANISLAVSKY in the Spelling Dictionary:
Stanislavsky, th: system...
STANISLAVSKY in Modern explanatory dictionary, TSB:
(real name Alekseev) Konstantin Sergeevich (1863-1938), Russian director, actor, teacher, theater theorist, honorary academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1925; honorary academician of the RAS ...
STANISLAVSKY ARTHUR OSKAROVICH
Stanislavsky (Arthur Oskarovich) - Siberian publicist (1845 - 1897), a native of the Kingdom of Poland; in 1863 took part in the Polish uprising, ...
STANISLAVSKY ANTON GRIGORIEVICH in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia:
Stanislavsky (Anton Grigorievich, 1817 - 1870) - professor of encyclopedia and Russian state law since 1842 in Kazan, and since ...
STANISLAVSKY KONSTANTIN SERGEEVICH
(real name - Alekseev) Konstantin Sergeevich, Soviet actor, director, teacher, theater theorist, National artist …
STANISLAVSKY, KONSTANTIN SERGEEVICH in Collier's Dictionary:
(real name - Alekseev) (1863-1938), Russian actor and director. Born on January 17, 1863 in Moscow. The great actor and director, Stanislavsky...
THEATER AND DECORATION ART, SCENOGRAPHY in the Dictionary of Fine Arts Terms:
- the art of creating a visual image of a performance through scenery, costumes, lighting, and staging equipment. The development of theatrical and decorative art is due to the development of theater, drama, fine arts...
IBSEN in the Literary Encyclopedia:
Henrik Johann - Norwegian writer, one of the most outstanding playwrights of the 19th century. R. in a small seaside...
FEDOTOVA GLICERIA NIKOLAEVNA in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
Glikeria Nikolaevna, Russian actress, People's Artist of the Republic (1924), Hero of Labor (1924). Since 1858 she performed at...
THEATRICALITY in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
1) specific artistic merit, which is inherent in works of theatrical art and distinguishes it from other types of art by a special aesthetic nature, characteristic...

On January 17 (January 5, old style), 1863, Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky (real name Alekseev) was born - an outstanding Russian theater director, actor and teacher, theorist of stage art, founder of the famous acting system, People's Artist of the USSR (1936).

Family, childhood and youth

Konstantin Sergeevich was born in Moscow, into the famous merchant family of the Alekseevs. By birth and upbringing, he belonged to the highest circles of Russian industrialists, was related to all the eminent merchants and intellectuals of Moscow (with S.I. Mamontov, the Tretyakov brothers). His cousin N.A. Alekseev served as Moscow mayor from 1885 to 1893.

Fourty years future director Stanislavsky lived in his parents' house at the Red Gate. The Alekseevs, as you know, were hereditary manufacturers, specialists in the manufacture of gimp - the finest gold and silver wire from which brocade was woven. Only my grandmother, the once famous Parisian actress Marie Varley, who came to St. Petersburg on tour, had anything to do with the theater. The Frenchwoman married a Moscow merchant and remained in Russia forever, instilling in the Alekseev family a special love for theatrical art.

As a child, Kostya was a weak child. He suffered from rickets and was often sick. Until the age of ten I couldn’t pronounce “r” and “l”. But in big family The Alekseevs (there were nine children) spared no expense on their education. In addition to ordinary subjects, merchant children studied foreign languages, learned dancing and fencing. In the summer we vacationed in Lyubimovka, on the banks of the Klyazma. Celebrations with fireworks and amateur performances were held in a specially built home theater, the so-called Alekseevsky circle (1877-1888). The initiator of the theatrical ventures was the young Konstantin Alekseev.

Konstantin Sergeevich received his education at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, after which he was immediately introduced to family business. For almost ten years he worked at his father's factory and became one of its directors. My parents sent me to France more than once to study improved machines. According to some biographers of Stanislavsky-Alekseev, Konstantin successfully combined work at the factory with his theatrical activities, but never considered family business to be the main thing in his life. He literally raved about the theater. In the evenings Konstantin Sergeevich played in Alekseevsky theater club, intensively studied plastic arts and vocals with the best teachers, learned from the examples of the Maly Theater actors. Among his idols were Lensky, Musil, Fedotova, Ermolova. In 1885, Konstantin Alekseev was elected a member of the directorate and treasurer of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society and its conservatory. Together with the singer and teacher F.P. Komissarzhevsky and artist F.L. Sollogub Konstantin Sergeevich is developing a project for the Moscow Society of Art and Literature (MOIiL), investing personal financial resources in it. The impetus for the creation of the Society was a meeting with director A.F. Fedotov: in his play “The Players” based on Gogol, K.S. Alekseev played Ikharev. A successful relative, Moscow mayor Nikolai Alekseev, learning about his cousin’s idea, frowns: “Kostya doesn’t have what he needs in his head.”

In order not to disgrace the family name, Konstantin adopted the stage name Stanislavsky (in honor of the talented amateur artist Dr. Markov, who performed under this name), but was never able to leave the family business for the sake of art.

A very typical case was when in the spring of 1892. Konstantin Sergeevich went abroad in order to study gold-plating production at the best European enterprises. But when he returned to Moscow, he was met at the station not by anyone, but by the entrepreneur of the Maly Theater, who fell at his feet with a request to replace the actor Yuzhin, who suddenly fell ill on tour, in Yaroslavl. And what? Actor Stanislavsky immediately prevailed over manager Alekseev. He forgot about his loved ones who were waiting for him at home, about the report abroad and - from station to station - in the evening he played in Yaroslavl in the play “The Lucky Man”...

The father was furious. S. V. Alekseev was able to get a report on his son’s trip from Konstantin only after the end of the Maly Theater’s tour. And Konstantin received his father’s forgiveness only after he presented to the Board of the Partnership a bold project to reorganize factory production. The project finally showed that Konstantin Sergeevich could subsequently head the family business.

The beginning of a creative journey

The first performance of the MOIiL founded by Stanislavsky took place on December 8 (20), 1888. Over ten years of work on the stage of the Society, Alekseev-Stanislavsky became famous actor. His performance in a number of roles has been compared to best works professionals of the imperial stage, often in favor of the amateur actor: Anania Yakovlev in “Bitter Fate” (1888), Paratov in Ostrovsky’s “Dowry” (1890); Zvezdintsev in Tolstoy’s “Fruits of Enlightenment” (1891). Stanislavsky’s first directorial experience, Gnedich’s “Burning Letters” (1889), took place on the stage of Moscow Institute of Literature and Literature.

Next to the actor Stanislavsky, Maria Petrovna Perevoshchikova, who took the stage name Lilina, shone on stage. The granddaughter of a Moscow professor, the daughter of a venerable notary, who graduated from the Catherine Institute noble maidens with a big gold medal, she also decided to devote herself to the theater, against the wishes of her parents. On July 5 (17), 1889, Stanislavsky married her in the Lyubimov Church.

Route honeymoon the newlyweds were traditional - Germany, France, Vienna... In March 1890, a daughter, Ksenia, was born into the family, but she soon fell ill with pneumonia and died on May 1. In July next year Another daughter was born, who was named Kira, and a few years later a son, Igor, appeared in the family.

Despite his passion for innovation in art, in his personal life Konstantin Sergeevich was distinguished by constancy and valued his family hearth very much. He was faithful to Maria Petrovna, but was wary of other women: “In this regard, I am an egoist. You’ll get carried away and leave your wife and children...” Stanislavsky allowed himself to “get carried away” only on stage.

Since January 1891, Stanislavsky officially took over the leadership of the director's department at the Society of Arts. He staged the performances “Othello” (1896), “ Polish Jew"Erkman-Chatrian (1896), "Much Ado About Nothing" (1897), "Twelfth Night" (1897), "The Sunken Bell" (1898), etc. During this period, according to the definition he later formulated, Stanislavsky was looking for "director's techniques for identifying the spiritual essence of a work”: he used authentic antique or exotic objects, experimented with light, sound, and rhythm. However, Shakespeare's "experimental" productions were clearly considered unsuccessful by the public and critics. The play “Othello” directed by Stanislavsky (where the director himself played the main role) barely lasted four performances and ended in complete failure. Stanislavsky was inclined to blame the actors’ “routine approach” to performance, the use of hackneyed “cliches” in the game, and complained about the urgent need for stage reforms. Subsequently, Konstantin Sergeevich himself never undertook to stage Shakespeare, even on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, leaving the work on these productions to other directors.

My creative activity, oddly enough, the actor Stanislavsky continued to combine his activities as a manager at the Alekseev family enterprise.

In 1893 the death of his father and tragic death cousin Nikolai Alekseev forced Konstantin Sergeevich to take the management of the factory seriously. He visited the factory almost every day, finally got involved in business and was elected director of the Management Board. The Board included eight more people: two Stanislavsky brothers - Vladimir and Boris, E.K. Buchheim; the Shamshin family - two brothers, the elder brother’s wife and her brother (S.V. Lepeshkin), as well as P.I. Vishnyakov.

The Alekseev factory traded through representatives and regional offices, who had to spend a lot of time pleasing clients, while the task of the factory Board was to manage fairly simple and stable production, obtain government orders and bank loans for business development. The Director of the Management Board began to skillfully rebuild the management.

Delegating authority and avoiding small decisions financial issues, moving away from petty control over branches and representative offices, Konstantin Sergeevich managed to find time to develop his passion for the stage without much damage to business. In fact, he did everything to ensure that the factory did not lose profitability and generate income: after all, the theater also required expenses. Long years Stanislavsky was literally torn between his responsibilities as a businessman, his theatrical profession and his family.

His 1896 letter to his wife about a dinner in honor of S.Yu. is very indicative. Witte (Minister of Finance of the Russian Empire):

“Oh, my dear, how funny, boring and untalented everyone seemed to me! Oh, how desperately unbearable it is to act like one all evening business man and talk about money. Our chosen merchants did not say a single living, sincere and talented word, but we had to sit in full view of Witte so that he could see and realize that we were grateful to him for some kind of duty. I sat the whole evening and pretended that I understood and was interested in what he was saying. Don’t believe me, I didn’t understand anything because I was flapping my ears and thinking about you.”

It must be said that Stanislavsky’s wife M.P. Lilina had a negative attitude towards Konstantin Sergeevich’s participation in the Alekseevs’ business. Her husband’s relatives did not accept the “actor,” and Maria Petrovna had no choice but to demand from her husband that he devote less time to the factory and more to his family and theater. But the factory remained the main source of wealth. The skills acquired while managing it helped Stanislavsky in organizing the Moscow Art Theater, and family differences smoothed out when the children grew up. Maria Petrovna Lilina again appeared on stage and became a full member of the Moscow Art Theater Association.

Moscow Art Theater

Dissatisfaction with the state of the stage at the end of the 19th century, the desire for stage reforms, and the denial of stage routine provoked the search for almost all famous theatrical figures of that era: A. Antoine and O. Bram, Yuzhin at the Moscow Maly Theater and Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Philharmonic School. In 1897, the latter invited K.S. Stanislavsky to meet and discuss a number of issues relating to the state of the theater. Stanislavsky saved business card, on the back of which it is written in pencil: “I’ll be at the Slavic Bazaar at one o’clock - won’t I see you?” He signed the envelope: “The famous first date-sitting with Nemirovich-Danchenko. The first moment of the theater’s founding.”

During this legendary conversation, the tasks of the new theater business and the program for their implementation were formulated. The conversation lasted eighteen (!) hours. According to Stanislavsky, they discussed “the foundations of the future business, issues of pure art, our artistic ideals, stage ethics, equipment, organizational plans, projects for the future repertoire, our relationships.” The composition of the troupe, the backbone of which would be young, intelligent actors, and the modest and discreet design of the hall were discussed. At the same time, they divided responsibilities (the literary and artistic veto belongs to Nemirovich-Danchenko, the artistic veto to Stanislavsky) and sketched out a system of slogans by which the theater would live. We discussed the range of authors (Ibsen, Hauptmann, Chekhov) and the expected repertoire.

Almost a year later, June 14 (26), 1898 in the Moscow region dacha place Pushkino began the work of the Moscow Art Theater troupe, created from Nemirovich’s students at the Philharmonic and amateur actors from the Society of Art and Literature. Before the start of the rehearsal work, Konstantin Sergeevich said:

“...We took on a business that was not simple, private, but public character. We strive to create the first intelligent, moral public theater, and this high goal we dedicate our lives.”

Subsequently, speaking about the program of the Art Theater, Stanislavsky called it truly revolutionary:

“We protested against her old manner of acting, and against theatricality, and against false pathos, declamation, and against the acting, and against the bad conventions of staging, scenery, and against the premiership, which spoiled the ensemble, and against the entire structure of the performances, and against the insignificant repertoire of the theaters of that time."

In the very first months of rehearsals, it became clear that the division of “artistic” responsibilities among theater managers was conditional character. Rehearsals for “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” were started by Stanislavsky, who created the mise-en-scène of the play, which shocked the audience at the premiere, and Nemirovich-Danchenko insisted on choosing his student I.V. for the role of Tsar Fyodor from six candidates. Moskvina. On individual lessons with the artist, he helped create the weak-willed but touching image of the “peasant king,” which became the opening of the performance.

Stanislavsky believed that “Tsar Fedor” began the historical and everyday line at the Moscow Art Theater, to which he attributed the productions of “The Merchant of Venice” (1898), “Antigone” (1899), “The Death of the Terrible” (1899), “The Power of Darkness” ( 1902), “Julius Caesar” (1903) and others. He connected with Chekhov another important line of the Art Theater's productions: the line of intuition and feeling. Here Stanislavsky included “Woe from Wit” (1906), “A Month in the Country” (1909), “The Brothers Karamazov” (1910), “Nikolai Stavrogin” (1913), “The Village of Stepanchikovo” (1917), etc.

At the Moscow Art Theater, Stanislavsky managed to distribute responsibilities quite successfully. Having shouldered literary part to Nemirovich-Danchenko, administrative - to S.T. Morozov (and then - to A.A. Stakhovich), Konstantin Sergeevich got the opportunity to focus exclusively on creative work. In addition, Stanislavsky acted as an arbiter in the intra-theater struggle for administrative power, which the innovative director himself was of little interest to. It was important to him that organizational problems did not subordinate creative ones.

The merchant-Alekseev and the artist-Stanislavsky were constantly in clear interaction with each other, sometimes entering into conflicts.

His letter to Nemirovich-Danchenko during the latter’s quarrel with Morozov (early 1900) is indicative:

“I am ready to share my work and success with anyone, maneuvering between egos, I try to quietly sew up all the seams; I not only refuse money, but for the right to do what I love, I cross out 10,000 rubles from my budget every year, contribute the last of my money to the business, deprive my family and myself of the most necessary things and, somehow dodging financially, patiently wait for all the debts of the business to be covered and I will get what rightfully belongs to me... I also put up with the fact that I have to play and (often) play not what my soul asks for, I play everything I need, and not what I want. In a word, I am destroying myself both morally and financially and I don’t complain about it until my nerves reach the last degree of tension.”

Until the First World War, Stanislavsky’s schedule included “factory” and “theater” days, during which he could completely devote himself to his favorite work.

Theatrical "divorce"

The most significant performances of the Art Theater, such as “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” by A.K. Tolstoy, “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters”, “ The Cherry Orchard» A.P. Chekhov was staged jointly by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. In Chekhov's subsequent productions, the discoveries of "The Seagull" were continued and brought to harmony. The principle of continuous development united a scattered, scattered life on stage. A special principle of stage communication (“an object outside the partner”), incomplete, semi-closed, was developed. The viewer at Chekhov's performances at the Moscow Art Theater was pleased and tormented by the recognition of life, in its previously unimaginable detail. Chekhov showed especially clearly (even in comparison with European representatives of the new drama) that silence, a pause, simple human speech, not rhymed or decorated with metaphors, can become an equally powerful means. So at the turn of the century there arises (usually not a conscious theatrical figures, nor by actors) the confrontation between the “Shakespearean” and “Chekhovian” lines, which will pass through the entire twentieth century. Stanislavski, who admired Shakespeare, made his main contribution to performing arts associated with the “Chekhov line”. His “system” got along well with the dramaturgy of Chekhov and Gorky, allowing the theater to attract audiences not with external effects, costumes, or scenery, but with the content of the play and the performance of the actors.

The first performance where Stanislavsky worked separately was Brandt. At this time, Stanislavsky, together with Meyerhold, created the experimental Studio on Povarskaya (1905). During the period of fashion for decadence, Stanislavsky staged in 1907 experimental performances “The Drama of Life” by K. Hamsun and “The Life of Man” by L. Andreev. These experiments brought nothing but grief and disappointment. In the plays of the Symbolists there is a completely different system of feelings than in the works of Chekhov or Gorky. Experiences in searching for new theatrical forms Stanislavski would then continue in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (1908): the black velvet effect and lighting techniques were used to magical transformations. It was a triumph for Stanislavsky. The performance stood out for its complete, perfect merging of acting, music, and scenography into a single whole. The voices of the actors sounded ghostly, intertwining into a single melody; the choirs sang, endlessly repeating “We are in a long line following the Blue Bird, following the Blue Bird, following the Blue Bird...”.

When creating the Moscow Art Theater, Stanislavsky believed Nemirovich-Danchenko that tragic roles were not his repertoire. On stage, the Moscow Art Theater completed only a few of his previous tragic roles in performances from the repertoire of the Society of Arts and Letters (Henry from The Sunken Bell, Imshin). In the productions of the first season, Stanislavsky played Trigorin (The Seagull) and Levborg (Edda Gabler). According to critics, his masterpieces on the Moscow Art Theater stage were the following roles: Astrov (“Uncle Vanya”), Vershinin (“Three Sisters”), Satin (“At the Depths”), Gaev (“The Cherry Orchard”), Shabelsky (“Ivanov,” 1904). The duet of Vershinin - Stanislavsky and Masha - Knipper-Chekhova entered the treasury of stage lyrics.

Stanislavsky's "System"

Despite successful director's work, Stanislavsky continues to set himself more and more new tasks in the acting profession. He demands from himself the creation of a system that could give the artist the opportunity for public creativity according to the laws of the “art of experience” at every moment of being on stage, an opportunity that opens up to geniuses in moments of the highest inspiration.

In 1910, cut off from the theater by a long illness, Stanislavsky delved into the study of the “life of the human spirit” of the actor on stage. He discovers more and more new elements of his “system”, clarifies the laws that underlie the art of acting. He borrows from Gogol the definition of the “nail” of the role, then finds his own - “through action”. New terms and concepts are coming into use in the theater - “pieces”, “tasks”, “affective memory”, “communication”, “circle of attention”. With the help of his closest friend and colleague L.A. Sulerzhitsky, he created in 1912 at the Moscow Art Theater the so-called First Studio for young actors. Your search in the area theater theory and Stanislavsky transferred pedagogy here. However, Konstantin Sergeevich, overloaded with work at the Moscow Art Theater, works with studio students only in fits and starts. The course of classes according to the Stanislavsky system is taught by Sulerzhitsky. The studio's productions of "The Death of Hope" by Geijermans and "The Cricket on the Stove" by Charles Dickens were successful. According to Stanislavsky himself, they discovered in young performers “a simplicity and depth hitherto unknown to us” and clearly proved the fruitfulness of applying the principles of his system.

First World War and Revolution

Stanislavsky met the World War at the European resort of Marienbad. While the crowded train from Munich was heading to the Lindau border station, the deadline set for the departure of foreigners from Germany expired. Interrogations, searches... C with great difficulty Stanislavsky managed to return to Russia. He turned out to be the only director of the Alekseev gold-plating factory who considered it immoral to profit from the war.

“I had a small incident at the factory, and I gave up both incredible income and salary. It’s true that it hurts your pocket, but it doesn’t stain your soul,” he writes to his daughter.

Stanislavsky the director finally defeated the businessman Alekseev. He contrasts the solemn world of Pushkin’s “Little Tragedies” with the war and thirst for profit of his former business partners. Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko and Alexander Benois as an artist and director.

In 1916, Stanislavsky opened the Second Studio. It is headed by the Moscow Art Theater director V. Mchedelov.

Stanislavsky’s acting fate was especially affected by two of his last works: Salieri in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” by Pushkin (1915) and Rostanev, whom he was supposed to play again in the new production of “The Village of Stepanchikov”, which had been preparing since 1916. The reason for the failure of Rostanev’s role, which was never shown to the public, remains one of the mysteries of the history of theater and the psychology of creativity. According to many testimonies, Stanislavsky “rehearsed perfectly.” After the dress rehearsal on March 28 (April 10), 1917, he stopped working on the role and forever refused new roles (he broke this refusal only out of necessity, during a tour abroad in 1922–1924, he agreed to play Voivode Shuisky in the old play “Tsar” Fyodor Ioannovich").

Revolutionary upheavals had a disastrous effect on theatrical life Moscow. For six years - from 1918 to 1923 - the Moscow Art Theater showed only two premieres ("Cain" and "The Inspector General"), one of which is a revival of an old play. “Cain” began to be rehearsed in 1919, but Stanislavsky was soon taken hostage during the White breakthrough to Moscow, and the production had to be postponed. The director saw this performance as a mystery play set in a Gothic cathedral. Unfortunately, “Cain” had to be shown unfinished in 1920, and the audience received it coldly.

The general crisis of the theater was aggravated by the fact that a significant part of the troupe led by Kachalov, who went on tour in 1919, found themselves cut off from Moscow by war events. The production of The Inspector General (1921) was an unconditional victory. For the role of Khlestakov, Stanislavsky called Mikhail Chekhov, who had recently transferred from the Moscow Art Theater (the theater had already been declared academic) to the 1st studio.

Abroad

In 1922, the Moscow Art Theater, under the leadership of Stanislavsky, went on a long foreign tour of Europe and America, which was preceded by a return (not to in full force) Kachalovsky troupe. The popularity of Konstantin Sergeevich as a director and creator of the system acting everything increases. Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington... Stanislavsky plays, rehearses, attends receptions, clubs, concert halls, and at night writes the script for the film “The Tragedy of Nations” about Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich for a Hollywood company.

At the suggestion of an American publishing house, Stanislavsky begins work on a book about the theater. Publishers demand that the manuscript be submitted on time, and the director has to write in fits and starts - during intermissions, on trams, and somewhere on the boulevard... The book “My Life in Art” will be published in 1924 in Boston. The book will be published in Russian only in 1926. It will be translated into many languages, including English, because Stanislavsky considered the new, Moscow edition to be the main one.

Konstantin Sergeevich spends the summer at German resorts, the autumn in Paris, in rehearsals, in preparation for a new cycle of tours; sails to New York in November. In America, he finds that ordinary Americans “are extremely friendly with the Russians. They sincerely love us Russians.” Businessmen are a different matter: when it comes to the dollar, “they are very unpleasant.” Entrepreneurs are ruthless, merciless, and the law is always on their side. The slightest violation of the contract, and disaster - “walk on the sea.”

Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater in the 1920s-1930s

In the mid-1920s, the issue of changing theatrical generations at the Moscow Art Theater became acute. The general revolutionary confusion and the search for even more “new” forms in art threatened the very existence of the theater and the entire “Mkhat” school created through the efforts of Stanislavsky.

Returning from a foreign tour in August 1924, Stanislavsky suddenly discovered that in Moscow “enormous changes had taken place, primarily in the composition of the audience themselves.” In a letter to his son Igor, he reports that they were forgotten in Moscow - they do not bow in the streets, that criticism is mostly hostile towards the theater. In the press of those years, accusations of “backwardness,” “unwillingness” to accept revolutionary reality, and sabotage sounded more and more persistently. The activities of the Moscow Art Theater took place in an atmosphere of rejection of the “academic and bourgeois theater” by influential Proletkultists and Lefovites, who addressed socio-political accusations against the Art Theater. Stanislavsky entered the fight, wanting, first of all, to defend the traditional artistic values Russian stage art and the “system” it created.

In the same 1924, the 1st and 3rd studios of the Art Theater, under the influence of Proletkult propaganda, declared their independence. Only studio members of the 2nd studio join the theater troupe: A.K. Tarasova, O.N. Androvskaya, K.N. Elanskaya, A.P. Zueva, V.D. Bendina, V.S. Sokolova, N.P. Batalov, N.P. Khmelev, M.N. Kedrov, B.N. Livanov, V.Ya. Stanitsyn, M.I. Prudkin, A.N. Gribov, M.M. Yanshin, V.A. Orlov, I.Ya. Sudakov, N.M. Gorchakov, I.M. Kudryavtsev and others. Stanislavsky painfully experiences the “betrayal” of his students, giving the Moscow Art Theater studios the names of Shakespeare’s daughters from “King Lear”: Goneril and Regan - 1st and 3rd studios, Cordelia - 2nd.

The production of “A Warm Heart” (1926) was a response to those critics who asserted that “ Art Theater- dead." The rapid lightness of the tempo and picturesque festivity distinguished Beaumarchais’s “Crazy Day, or the Marriage of Figaro” (1927) (scenery by A.Ya. Golovin).

And literally a landmark production for younger generation studio students of the Art Theater became the play by M.A. Bulgakov “Days of the Turbins” (1926). It was a production by aspiring director I.Ya. Sudakov, in which the future “stars” of Soviet theater and cinema brilliantly played: O. Androvskaya, N. Khmelev, M. Prudkin, M. Yanshin. Stanislavsky actively participated in the selection of actors and the fight with the authorities to allow the scandalous performance on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater.

After a severe heart attack that occurred on the anniversary evening of the Moscow Art Theater in 1928, doctors permanently banned K.S. Stanislavsky to take to the stage. Stanislavsky returned to work only in 1929, but now his activities focused on theoretical research, pedagogical tests of the “system” and studies in his Opera studio, which existed since 1918 ( Opera theatre named after K.S. Stanislavsky).

For the production of “Othello” at the Moscow Art Theater, he wrote the director’s score for the tragedy, but he himself did not take part in the production of the play. The score, act by act, was sent along with letters from Stanislavsky from Nice, where the ailing director hoped to complete his treatment. Published in 1945, the score remained unused because I.Ya. Sudakov managed to release the play even before the end of Stanislavsky’s work.

In the early 1930s, Stanislavsky, using his authority and the support of Gorky, who had returned to the USSR, turned to the government to achieve a special position for the Art Theater. They went to meet him halfway. In January 1932, the theater received the name of the Moscow Art Theater of the USSR, in September 1932 the theater was named after Gorky, in 1937 it was awarded the Order of Lenin, in 1938 - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. In 1933, the Moscow Art Theater was given the building former Theater Korsha, where a branch of the Moscow Art Theater was formed. A museum was organized at the theater (1923) and an experimental stage laboratory (1942). The art theater was declared the main stage of the country. The danger of the Moscow Art Theater turning into an ordinary theater, as well as the danger of its capture by RAPP, was averted, but the theater risked remaining defenseless against another threat - being strangled in the arms of power.

During the 1932-1933 season, Konstantin Sergeevich produced the plays “ Dead Souls"by Gogol and "Talents and Admirers" by A.N. Ostrovsky. These are his last productions on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater. The seriously ill Stanislavsky spends most of his rehearsals of Ostrovsky's play in his office, reclining on the sofa. These were rather classes in acting, according to the method of physical actions developed by Stanislavsky: flu, heart attacks, pulse irregularities, pain and daily work with actors and directors of the Art and Opera theaters.

Opera performances by Stanislavsky

Plans for organizing the Theater Academy culminated in the spring of 1935 with the opening of the State Opera and Drama Studio. Konstantin Sergeevich was appointed its director.

Stanislavsky's opera performances are a separate issue. Konstantin Sergeevich staged in various genres: fairy tales (“The Snow Maiden”, “The Golden Cockerel”, “ May night"), romantic (" Queen of Spades", "Rigoletto", "Cio-Cio-san"), comedy ("The Secret Marriage" by Cimarosa, "Don Pasquale" by Donizetti, " Barber of Seville"Rossini), "folk drama" ("Boris Godunov", "The Tsar's Bride"), lyrical and everyday life ("Eugene Onegin", "La Boheme").

Konstantin Sergeevich’s main assistant in the “opera” business was his sister Zinaida Sergeevna Sokolova (1865-1950). In the Opera and Drama Studio K.S. Stanislavsky, she did a lot of work to train teachers of her brother’s “system” for opera artists.

Stanislavsky's "System" does not at all detract from the specificity of the opera. The director himself attached great importance to vocals. We worked with his studio students the best teachers modernity. At the same time, Konstantin Sergeevich believed that the main principles of creating an image by an opera actor are basically the same as the principles of creating an image by a dramatic actor.

Thus, in the play “Eugene Onegin,” the actors, trained by Stanislavsky and his followers, were able to fill the conventional form of the opera with deep psychological content, living feelings, and behavior. Stanislavsky laid the foundation for the musical theater of the stage ensemble (until then, the stage ensemble was considered the privilege of the dramatic theater).

The final

January 1938. The celebration of Stanislavski's 75th birthday was turned into an official celebration by the Soviet government. Countless greetings come from all over the country and from abroad. Leontyevsky Lane, where Konstantin Sergeevich lives, is renamed Stanislavsky Street.

Does the oldest and sickest director need all these honors? Nobody thought about this. Overcoming an ever-increasing weakness, Konstantin Sergeevich grabs onto work as the only thing that can prolong his life: he is keen on applying the method he discovered of working on a play at the rehearsals of Moliere’s “Tartuffe”.

Already terminally ill, Stanislavsky was brought the layout of his book “An Actor’s Work on Oneself” to sign for printing.

Remembering last years life of Stanislavsky, nurse Dukhovskaya will say: “He won time from death.”

The autopsy showed that the last ten years were truly won from death by the power of will and mind: an enlarged, failing heart, emphysema, aneurysms - a consequence of a severe heart attack back in 1928.

“Sharply expressed arteriosclerotic changes were found in all vessels of the body, with the exception of the brain, which did not undergo this process,” is the conclusion of the doctors.

“Stanislavsky was not afraid of death,” Yu.A. writes in his memoirs. Bakhrushin, the son of the founder of the Moscow Theater Museum, - but he hated it as the opposite of life.”

Based on materials:

"DIAMOND SYSTEM" STANISLAVSKY

Many outstanding people similar precious stones: They are just as rare and versatile. The great Russian director and theater reformer Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky was such a person. This is common knowledge.

But much less known is another facet of his talent - his talent as an engineer.

We will talk about it briefly now.

Let's start our story with... an ancient Indian legend.

Far, far away, in the inaccessible mountains, lay a diamond in the shape of a cube, each face of which was equal to one meter. Once every millennium, a raven flew to the diamond block to sharpen its beak. When the entire diamond cube was ground down by the crows, only one single moment of Eternity had passed...

This poetic legend contains enough data to make a simple calculation. Knowing the abrasion rate of a diamond and the hardness of a crow's beak (let's take it equal to 500 kg per square millimeter - after all, a crow's beak is so hard that it can crush bone), we can assume that approximately 1/2500 of a carat of diamond will be spent on one sharpening of the beak. The weight of the cube is 17.5 million carats. Thus, it will be completely worn out in about 4.5 trillion years. This, according to Indian legend, is the price of one single moment of Eternity...

But such is the price of a diamond’s durability, we add!

And now let's return from the legend to reality. Let's see how it is used in modern technology, primarily in drawing, high resistance of diamond against abrasion.

In Russia, the history of drawing technology and its main tool - the die (or, in other words, the die) is closely connected with the name... Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky (real name - Alekseev).

Stanislavsky's father, Sergei Vladimirovich Alekseev, led the trade and industrial partnership "Vladimir Alekseev", which owned a gold-plating factory (now the Moscow Elektroprovod plant). An engineer by training, Konstantin Sergeevich also worked at this factory. Here, thin threads were made from gold and silver wire by drawing - gimp, which was used in weaving brocade and for gold and silver embroidery. The thread was obtained by pulling metal wire through steel plates with holes or through holes in sapphire plates. But such dies wore out extremely quickly, and it was impossible to obtain with their help a very thin, and most importantly, evenly uniform thread along the entire length. It was necessary to change worn-out dies very often, stopping the drawing machines.

Let us note in passing that the record for Russian drawing technology was a red copper thread drawn at a factory in 1862 through a hardened steel wire “of such fineness that one pood of it was up to 700 versts in length.”

In 1892, K. S. Stanislavsky-Alekseev went abroad to study the gold-plating business. He visited Germany, Switzerland and France. And there he saw diamond drawing machines. Diamond dies were made from jewelry stones of 0.5 carats each, inserted into massive steel cylindrical holders. He really liked the machines, and he bought “a machine that immediately pulls goods through 14 diamonds. In other words, a very thick wire comes out of one end of the machine, and completely finished wire comes out of the other.” Its diameter was no longer 60, but 30 microns.

Thus, for the first time in Russia, through the efforts of K.S. Stanislavsky and his colleague engineer T.M. Alekseenko-Serbin created a workshop for diamond drawing of microwire.

Diamond drawing, used by K. S. Stanislavsky in gold-plating, turned out to be an extremely important, truly revolutionary technological process for the incandescent lamp industry, and then for the production of electronic radio tubes. After all, only with the help of diamond wire was it possible to move from the previous carbon (fragile, short-lived, very uneconomical) filament to luminous filaments made of such refractory and resistant materials as osmium, and then tungsten (remember that osmium melts at 2500, and tungsten - at 3410 degrees Celsius). New luminous filament, improvement in pumping air from glass cylinders, and electric lamp immediately gained durability: 1000-1500 hours of continuous operation versus 300-400 hours of “life” of lamps with carbon filament. This durability is the result of strict sizing of the thread, which was achieved by taking advantage of diamond's high abrasion resistance.

Millions of kilometers of tungsten and other refractory metals and alloys now pass through the diamond eye to become the cathodes and anodes of electric and electronic lamps. In addition, almost all ultra-thin copper and other microwires with a diameter of up to 15 microns (six times thinner than a human hair!) are pulled through the diamond die to produce modern microminiature devices.

Typically, it is possible to stretch 17-18 thousand km of microwire through a diamond die. After this, the die can be repolished to draw thicker wire. But among diamond dies there are champions. Thus, one of them turned out to be amazingly resistant: it was possible to stretch a microwire with a total length of 450 thousand km through it. This amount of microwire could be wrapped around the globe eleven times around the equator, and there would still be a “tail” of 10 thousand km left.

If they ever begin to compile a chronicle of drawing technology, one of the first to be named will be the name of the Russian engineer Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky - the pioneer of another famous system - the diamond one!

G. MISHNEVICH, Leningrad

Article in the magazine “Young Technician”, 1970, No. 8, pp. 42-43

Born in Moscow in the family of industrialist Sergei Vladimirovich Alekseev and Elizaveta Vasilyevna. He had nine brothers and sisters. In 1878 - 1881 he studied at the gymnasium at the Lazarevsky Institute, and later worked at a family enterprise.

The family was fond of art and theater - a special theater hall was equipped in their Moscow house. Young Konstantin enthusiastically studied vocals and plastic arts with the best teachers, imitated the roles of the actors of the Maly Theater, performing in the home theater Alekseevsky circle. First stage debut in the role of Podkolesin in the play by N.V. Gogol's "Marriage" took place on the amateur stage in the house of A.A. Karzinkina on Pokrovsky Boulevard in December 1884.

On the day of the premiere, a funny thing happened: “In the last act of the play, as you know, Podkolesin climbs out of the window. The stage where the performance takes place was so small that you had to climb out of the window and walk on the piano standing behind the scenes. Of course, I pushed through the lid and broke several strings. The trouble is that the performance was given only as a boring prelude to the upcoming happy dancing. It was one of the most fun balls - but, of course, not for me.” As K.S. recalled Stanislavsky, at midnight they could not find a master to repair the piano, and he sat in the corner of the hall all evening and sang all the dances in a row.

In 1886, Konstantin was elected a member of the directorate of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society. Later, he develops a project for the Moscow Society of Art and Literature (MOIiL) and takes the stage name Stanislavsky. The first performance of MOIiL took place on December 8 (20), 1888. Within ten years of acting, Konstantin Stanislavsky became a famous actor, enjoying success on par with professional actors imperial stage.

In 1888, the Society of Art and Literature was founded, where young Konstantin played roles in the plays “ Stingy Knight» A.S. Pushkin, “Cunning and Love” by Schiller, Pisemsky, where he enjoyed great success as an outstanding actor of his time. At the same time, Konstantin Stanislavsky made his first directorial work based on the play “The Fruits of Enlightenment” by L.N. Tolstoy.

On June 14 (26), 1898, the work of the troupe of the Art Theater (MAT), founded by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, began in Pushkino near Moscow. The core of the troupe consisted of amateur actors from the Society of Arts and Letters and students of the Philharmonic.

The first performance was “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” by A.K. Tolstoy in a joint production by Stanislavsky and A.A. Sanina. “The Seagull” by A.P. brought glory to the new theater. Chekhov, staged by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. Then plays by A.P. were staged. Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" in 1899, "Three Sisters" in 1901, "The Cherry Orchard" 1904.

Since the 1900s, Konstantin Stanislavsky has been improving his system of teaching acting.

In 1902, M. Gorky’s plays “The Bourgeois” and “At the Lower Depths” were staged as harbingers revolutionary events, in which a new hero appeared on the stage - the worker.

In 1905, an experimental Studio was created on Povarskaya Street. There was a search for new forms of conveying reality, including decorative means: against a background of black velvet, parts of the interior were schematically depicted, among which appeared actors in makeup masks and grotesque costumes.

In 1912, Stanislavsky organized the 1st Studio at the Moscow Art Theater to work with young people - he wanted to reform the performing arts.

In 1918 he headed the Opera Studio Bolshoi Theater, which later became the Opera House. K.S. Stanislavsky, where Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin was staged in 1922 and The Tsar's Bride in 1926.

In the 1930s, Konstantin Stanislavsky obtained from the authorities a special position for the Art Theater, equalizing it with the Bolshoi and Maly theaters. In 1932, the Art Theater was named after Gorky - the Moscow Art Theater of the USSR. Gorky.

In 1933, the building of the former Korsch Theater was transferred to the Art Theater to create a branch.

In 1937, Konstantin Stanislavsky was awarded the order Lenin, in 1938 with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Konstantin Stanislavsky died on August 7, 1938 in Moscow from heart disease and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky (real name Alekseev) entered the Russian history as a great theater reformer, actor, director, theater director, theorist and teacher. The creator of the famous acting system, which has been extremely popular in Russia and in the world for 100 years.

Konstantin Alekseev was born on January 5 (17), 1863 in Moscow, into a large merchant family (he had nine brothers and sisters in total), related to the largest factory owners and philanthropists of that time - S.I. Mamontov and the Tretyakov brothers. Father - Sergei Vladimirovich Alekseev, mother - Elizaveta Vasilievna (nee Yakovleva). The mayor of Moscow Alekseev was his cousin. Younger sister- Zinaida Sergeevna Sokolova (Alekseeva), Honored Artist of the RSFSR. Konstantin Stanislavsky's grandfather, P. Alekseenko, was born in Ukraine and after his marriage moved to Moscow, where he changed his last name to Alekseev.

Stanislavsky began his stage activities in his youth. On September 5, 1877, Kostya Alekseev (he took the pseudonym Stanislavsky in 1885) performed for the first time in a home amateur performance. A circle of theater lovers formed around him, called Alekseevsky. In 1888, Stanislavsky, together with director A.F. Fedotov, singer and teacher F.P. Komissarzhevsky, artist F.L. Sollogub founded the Society of Art and Literature and created a drama troupe with it. In 1898, Stanislavsky, together with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded the Moscow Art Theater.

Already in the productions of the Alekseevsky circle and in other amateur performances, Stanislavsky’s remarkable acting talent was revealed. At that time he played many comedic roles in operettas and vaudevilles, Podkolesin in Gogol’s “The Marriage” and Neschastlivtsev in A. Ostrovsky’s “The Forest.” At the Society of Art and Literature, Stanislavsky's range of roles expanded. Along with comedic ones, he also created tragic characters, for example, Othello in Shakespeare’s tragedy and Uriel Acosta in Gutzkow’s play of the same name, acting as the director of these performances.

Stanislavsky’s first major independent directorial work was even earlier, in 1891, when he directed “The Fruits of Enlightenment” by L. Tolstoy. Stanislavsky saw in this comedy not just a ridicule of the spiritual squalor of the philistine aristocratic world, but, above all, a depiction of the bitter lot of the peasants. In Stanislavsky’s unusually diverse acting work (from Astrov in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and Satin in Gorky’s “The Lower Depths” to the brightly comedic roles of Krutitsky in the plays “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” by Ostrovsky and Argan in Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid”), in his The director's activity reflected the fruitfulness of the principles of life's truth.

Stanislavsky's first production after the revolution was “Cain” by J.G. Byron (1920). Rehearsals had just begun when Stanislavsky was taken hostage during the White breakthrough to Moscow. The general crisis was aggravated at the Art Theater by the fact that a significant part of the troupe, led by Vasily Kachalov, who went on tour in 1919, found themselves cut off by war events Civil War from Moscow.

The production of The Inspector General (1921) was an unconditional victory. For the role of Khlestakov, Stanislavsky appointed Mikhail Chekhov, who had recently transferred from the Moscow Art Theater (the theater had already been declared academic) to his 1st studio. In 1922, the Moscow Art Theater, under the direction of Stanislavsky, went on a long foreign tour of Europe and America, which was preceded by the return (not in full strength) of the Kachalovsky troupe.

Stanislavsky's activities in the 20s and 30s were determined primarily by his desire to defend the traditional artistic values of Russian stage art. Stanislavsky defined the task facing the artist this way: “Routine must be called theatricality, that is, the manner of walking and speaking in a special way.” theater stage. If so, then routine should not be confused with necessary conditions scenes, since the latter undoubtedly requires something special that is not found in life. This is where the task lies: to bring life onto the stage, bypassing the routine (which kills this life) and at the same time maintaining stage conditions.” Throughout his entire creative career, Stanislavsky sought a solution to this problem. In the course of these quests, he came to the discovery and definition of the laws of stage creativity, known as the Stanislavsky system. This system is the discovery of laws rooted in the nature of an actor's creativity. Stanislavsky's system is inextricably linked with the art of experience, which its creator considered the highest expression of the principles of stage realism. Stanislavsky contrasted the art of experience with craft - the use of once and for all established cliches, and distinguished it from the art of representation, based on the mechanical repetition of a result achieved only once in the process of living experience. From the very beginning of his activity, Stanislavsky saw in the artist a bearer of high civic and ethical principles. This is where the doctrine of the super task arose - the main ideological goal for which the artist creates. Associated with the super task is the concept end-to-end- a single main line of action.

After a severe heart attack that occurred on the anniversary evening at the Moscow Art Theater in 1928, doctors forever forbade Stanislavsky to appear on stage. Stanislavsky returned to work only in 1929, concentrating on theoretical research, on pedagogical tests of the “system” and on classes in his Bolshoi Theater Opera Studio, which existed since 1918 (now the Moscow Academic Musical Theatre named after K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko).

At the end of his life, Stanislavsky came to the so-called method of physical actions, based on the recognition of the leading importance of the physical nature of action in mastering inner life roles. Physical action in Stanislavsky’s understanding, it is inseparable from the “life of the human spirit,” which the artist is called upon to reveal to the viewer. The system of Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky - the wonderful legacy of the great master - is known and appreciated all over the world.

Alekseev

Russian actor and director, theorist of performing arts.
Honorary Academician St. Petersburg Academy Sciences (1917).
Honorary Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1925).
People's Artist of the Republic (1923).
People's Artist of the USSR (09/06/1936).

He lived for forty years in his parents’ house at the Red Gate. The Alekseevs were hereditary manufacturers and industrialists, specialists in the production of gimp - the finest gold and silver wire. from which brocade was woven. Only Stanislavsky’s grandmother, the once famous Parisian actress Marie Varley, who came to St. Petersburg on tour, had anything to do with the theater.

Kostya was a weak child. He suffered from rickets and was often sick. Until the age of ten I couldn’t pronounce “r” and “l”. But thanks to his mother’s care, he grew stronger and became a leader among his peers.
The large Alekseev family (there were nine children) spared no expense on education. In addition to ordinary subjects, children studied foreign languages, learned dancing, and fencing.
In the summer we vacationed in Lyubimovka, on the banks of the Klyazma. Celebrations with fireworks and amateur performances were held in a specially built home theater, the so-called Alekseevsky Circle (1877-1888). The initiator of the theatrical ventures was the young Konstantin Alekseev.
Konstantin worked at his father’s factory for many years and became one of the directors. He traveled to France more than once to study improved machines. Working out during the day family matter, in the evenings he played in the Alekseevsky theater group. In January 1885, he adopted the stage name Stanislavsky in honor of the talented amateur artist Dr. Markov, who performed under this name.

Next to him on stage was Maria Petrovna Perevoshchikova, who took the stage name Lilina. The granddaughter of a Moscow professor, the daughter of a venerable notary, who graduated from the Catherine Institute for Noble Maidens with a large gold medal, decided to devote herself to the theater. On July 5 (17), 1889, Stanislavsky married her in the Lyubimov church.
The route of the newlyweds' honeymoon was traditional - Germany, France, Vienna... In March 1890, a daughter, Ksenia, was born into the family, but she soon fell ill with pneumonia and died on May 1. In July of the following year, another daughter was born, who was named Kira...

In 1886, Stanislavsky was elected a member of the directorate and treasurer of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society and its conservatory. Together with the singer and teacher F.P. Komissarzhevsky and artist F.L. Sollogub Stanislavsky is developing a project for the Moscow Society of Art and Literature (MOIiL), investing personal financial resources in it. The impetus for the creation of the society was a meeting with director A.F. Fedotov: in his play “The Players” by Gogol, Stanislavsky played Ikharev. The first performance took place on December 8 (20), 1888. Over ten years of work on the stage of the Moscow Institute of Literature and Literature, Stanislavsky became a famous actor, his performance of a number of roles was compared with the best works of professionals on the imperial stage, often in favor of the amateur actor: Anania Yakovlev in Pisemsky’s “Bitter Fate” (1888), Platon Imshin in Pisemsky’s “Arbiters” (1889); Paratova in Ostrovsky’s “Dowry” (1890); Zvezdintsev in Tolstoy’s “Fruits of Enlightenment” (1891). On the stage of the society, the first directorial experience was Gnedich’s “Burning Letters” (1889). Strong impression The “Meiningen” tour (1890) had an impact on him, opening up the prospects of directing art. Since January 1891, Stanislavsky officially took over the leadership of the director's department at the Society of Arts. Staged the plays “Uriel Acosta” by Gutzkow (1895), “Othello” (1896), “The Polish Jew” by Erckman-Chatrian (1896), “Much Ado About Nothing” (1897), “Twelfth Night” (1897), “The Sunken Bell” "(1898); played Acosta, Othello, Burgomaster Mathis, Benedict, Malvolio, Master Henry. He is looking for, according to the definition he later formulated, “director’s techniques for revealing the spiritual essence of the work.” Following the example of the Meiningen people, he uses genuine antique or exotic objects, experiments with light, sound, and rhythm. Subsequently, Stanislavsky will highlight his production of Dostoevsky’s “The Village of Stepanchikov” (1891) and the role of Thomas (“paradise for the artist”).
Dissatisfaction with the state of the stage at the end of the 19th century, the desire for stage reforms, and the denial of stage routine provoked the search for A. Antoine and O. Brahm, Yuzhin at the Moscow Maly Theater and Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Philharmonic School. In 1897, the latter invited Stanislavsky to meet and discuss a number of issues relating to the state of the theater. Stanislavsky kept the business card, on the back of which it was written in pencil: “I’ll be at the Slavic Bazaar at one o’clock - won’t I see you?” He signed the envelope: “The famous first date-sitting with Nemirovich-Danchenko. The first moment of the theater’s founding.”

During this legendary conversation, the tasks of the new theater business and the program for their implementation were formulated. According to Stanislavsky, they discussed “the fundamentals of the future business, issues of pure art, our artistic ideals, stage ethics, technique, organizational plans, projects for the future repertoire, our relationships.” In a conversation that lasted eighteen hours, the composition of the troupe was discussed, the core of which would be young, intelligent actors, and the modestly discreet design of the hall. They divided responsibilities (the literary and artistic veto belonged to Nemirovich-Danchenko, the artistic veto to Stanislavsky) and sketched out a system of slogans by which the theater would live. We discussed the range of authors (Ibsen, Hauptmann, Chekhov) and repertoire.

Almost a year later, on June 14 (26), 1898, in the dacha place of Pushkino near Moscow, the work of the Moscow Art Theater troupe began, created from Nemirovich’s students at the Philharmonic and amateur actors from the Society of Art and Literature. In the very first months of rehearsals, it became clear that the division of responsibilities of the leaders was conditional. Rehearsals for “Tsar Fedor” were started by Stanislavsky, who created the mise-en-scène of the play, which shocked the audience at the premiere, and Nemirovich-Danchenko insisted on choosing his student I.M. for the role of Tsar Fedor from among six candidates. Moskvina and in individual lessons with the artist helped him create a touching image of the “peasant king”, which became the opening of the performance. Stanislavsky believed that “Tsar Fedor” began the historical and everyday line at the Moscow Art Theater, to which he attributed the productions of “The Merchant of Venice” (1898), “Antigone” (1899), “The Death of the Terrible” (1899), “The Power of Darkness” ( 1902), “Julius Caesar” (1903), etc. With Chekhov, he connected another – the most important line of productions of the Art Theater: the line of intuition and feeling, where he attributed “Woe from Wit” (1906), “A Month in the Country” (1909) , “The Brothers Karamazov” (1910), “Nikolai Stavrogin” (1913), “The Village of Stepanchikovo” (1917), etc.

The most significant performances of the Art Theater, such as “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” by A.K. Tolstoy, “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters”, “The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov was staged jointly by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. In Chekhov's subsequent productions, the discoveries of "The Seagull" were continued and brought to harmony. The principle of continuous development united a scattered, scattered life on stage. A special principle of stage communication (“an object outside the partner”), incomplete, semi-closed, was developed. The viewer at Chekhov's performances at the Moscow Art Theater was pleased and tormented by the recognition of life, in its previously unimaginable detail.

In their joint work on Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths” (1902), the contradictions between the two approaches became apparent. For Stanislavsky, the impetus was a visit to the shelters of the Khitrov market. His directorial plan contains a lot of sharply noticed details: Medvedev’s dirty shirt, the shoes wrapped in outerwear on which Satin sleeps. Nemirovich-Danchenko looked for “cheerful lightness” on stage as the key to the play. Stanislavsky admitted that it was Nemirovich-Danchenko who found “the real manner of playing Gorky’s plays,” but he himself did not accept this manner of “simply reporting the role.” The poster for “At the Lower Depths” was not signed by either director. From the beginning of the theater, both directors sat at the director's table. Since 1906, “each of us had our own table, our own play, our own production,” because, explains Stanislavsky, everyone “wanted and could only follow his own independent line, while remaining faithful to the general, basic principle of the theater.” The first performance where Stanislavsky worked separately was Brandt. At this time, Stanislavsky, together with Meyerhold, created the experimental Studio on Povarskaya (1905). Stanislavsky would then continue his experiments in searching for new theatrical forms in “The Life of a Man” by L. Andreev (1907): against a background of black velvet, schematically depicted fragments of interiors appeared, in which patterns of people appeared: grotesquely pointed lines of costumes, make-up masks. In Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (1908), black velvet effect and lighting techniques were used to create magical transformations.

When creating the Moscow Art Theater, Stanislavsky believed Nemirovich-Danchenko that tragic roles were not his repertoire. On stage, the Moscow Art Theater completed only a few of his previous tragic roles in performances from the repertoire of the Society of Arts and Letters (Henry from The Sunken Bell, Imshin). In the productions of the first season he played Trigorin (“The Seagull”) and Levborg (“Edda Gabler”). According to critics, his masterpieces on the Moscow Art Theater stage were the following roles: Astrov ("Uncle Vanya"), Shtokman ("Doctor Shtokman"), Vershinin ("Three Sisters"), Satin ("At the Depths"), Gaev ("The Cherry Orchard" ), Shabelsky (“Ivanov”, 1904). The duet of Vershinin - Stanislavsky and Masha - Knipper entered the treasury of stage lyrics.

Stanislavsky continues to set himself more and more new tasks in the acting profession. He demands from himself the creation of a system that could give the artist the opportunity for public creativity according to the laws of the “art of experience” at every moment of being on stage, an opportunity that opens up to geniuses in moments of the highest inspiration. Stanislavsky transferred his searches in the field of theatrical theory and pedagogy to the First Studio he created (public showings of its performances have started since 1913).

Following the cycle of roles in modern drama(Chekhov, Gorky, Leo Tolstoy, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Hamsun) comes a cycle of roles in the classics (Rakitin in A Month in the Country, 1909; Krutitsky in Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man, 1910; Argan in The Imaginary Invalid, 1913; Famusov in “Woe from Wit”, 1906; Count Lubin in “Provincial Woman”; Cavalier in “The Hostess of the Hotel” by Goldoni, 1914).

Stanislavsky’s fate was influenced by his last two acting works: Salieri in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” by Pushkin (1915), and Rostanev, whom he was supposed to play again in a new production of “The Village of Stepanchikov”, which had been preparing since 1916. The reason for Rostanev's failure, a role not shown to the public, remains one of the mysteries of the history of theater and the psychology of creativity. According to many testimonies, Stanislavsky “rehearsed perfectly.” After the dress rehearsal on March 28 (April 10), 1917, he stopped working on the role. After “not giving birth” to Rostanev, Stanislavsky forever refused new roles (he broke this refusal only out of necessity, during a tour abroad in 1922–1924, he agreed to play Voivode Shuisky in the old play “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich”).

Stanislavski's first production after the revolution was Byron's Cain (1920). Rehearsals had just begun when Stanislavsky was taken hostage during the White breakthrough to Moscow. The general crisis was aggravated at the Moscow Art Theater by the fact that a significant part of the troupe led by Kachalov, who went on tour in 1919, found themselves cut off from Moscow by military events. The production of The Inspector General (1921) was an unconditional victory. For the role of Khlestakov, Stanislavsky called Mikhail Chekhov, who had recently transferred from the Moscow Art Theater (the theater had already been declared academic) to the 1st studio. In 1922, the Moscow Art Theater, under the direction of Stanislavsky, went on a long foreign tour of Europe and America, which was preceded by the return (not in full strength) of the Kachalovsky troupe.

The issue of changing theatrical generations at the Moscow Art Theater is becoming increasingly acute. After much hesitation, the 1st and 3rd studios of the Art Theater became independent theaters in 1924, and studio members of the 2nd studio joined the theater troupe: A.K. Tarasova, O.N. Androvskaya, K.N. Elanskaya, A.P. Zueva, V.D. Bendina, V.S. Sokolova, N.P. Batalov, N.P. Khmelev, M.N. Kedrov, B.N. Livanov, V.Ya. Stanitsyn, M.I. Prudkin, A.N. Gribov, M.M. Yanshin, V.A. Orlov, I.Ya. Sudakov, N.M. Gorchakov, I.M. Kudryavtsev and others. Stanislavsky painfully experiences the “betrayal” of his students, giving the Moscow Art Theater studios the names of Shakespeare’s daughters from “King Lear”: Goneril and Regan - 1st and 3rd studios, Cordelia - 2nd.

Stanislavsky's activities in the 1920s and 1930s were determined, first of all, by his desire to defend the traditional artistic values of Russian stage art. In the press of those years, accusations of “backwardness,” “unwillingness” to accept revolutionary reality, and sabotage were increasingly heard. The activities of the Moscow Art Theater took place in an atmosphere of rejection of the “academic and bourgeois theater” by influential Proletkultists and Lefovites, who addressed socio-political accusations against the Art Theater. The production of “A Warm Heart” (1926) was a response to those critics who asserted that “The Art Theater is dead.” The rapid lightness of the tempo and picturesque festivity distinguished Beaumarchais’s “Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro” (1927, scenery by A.Ya. Golovin).

After young people from the 2nd studio and from the school of the 3rd studio joined the Moscow Art Theater troupe, Stanislavsky taught classes with them and produced their works performed with young directors on stage. Among these works, not always signed by Stanislavsky, are “The Battle of Life” based on Dickens (1924), “Days of the Turbins” (1926), “The Gerard Sisters” (a play by V.Z. Mass based on the melodrama “Two Orphans” by Dennery and Cormon ) and "Armored Train 14-69" (1927); “Embezzlers” by Kataev and “Untilovsk” by Leonov (1928).

After a severe heart attack that occurred on the anniversary evening at the Moscow Art Theater in 1928, doctors forever forbade Stanislavsky to appear on stage. Stanislavsky returned to work only in 1929, focusing on theoretical research, on pedagogical tests of the “system” and on classes in his Opera Studio, which existed since 1918 (Opera Theater named after K.S. Stanislavsky).

For the production of “Othello” at the Moscow Art Theater, he wrote the director’s score for the tragedy, which he sent act by act along with letters from Nice, where he hoped to complete his treatment. Published in 1945, the score remained unused because I.Ya. Sudakov managed to release the play before the end of Stanislavsky’s work.

In the early 1930s, Stanislavsky, using his authority and the support of Gorky, who had returned to the USSR, turned to the government to achieve a special position for the Art Theater. They went to meet him halfway. In January 1932, the theater received the name of the Moscow Art Theater of the USSR, in September 1932 the theater was named after Gorky, in 1937 it was awarded the Order of Lenin, in 1938 - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. In 1933, the Moscow Art Theater was given the building of the former Korsch Theater, where a branch of the Moscow Art Theater was formed. A museum (in 1923) and an experimental stage laboratory (in 1942) were organized at the theater. The art theater was declared the main stage of the country. The danger of the Moscow Art Theater turning into an ordinary theater, as well as the danger of its capture by RAPP, was averted, but the theater risked remaining defenseless against another threat - being strangled in the arms of power.

Among the works of the Moscow Art Theater of these years are “Fear” by Afinogenov (1931), “Dead Souls” by Gogol (1932), “Talents and Admirers” by Ostrovsky (1933), “Moliere” by Bulgakov (1936), “Tartuffe” by Moliere (1939, experimental work prepared for the stage after the death of Stanislavsky by M.N. Kedrov). In 1935, the last Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Studio opened (among his works was “Hamlet”). Almost without leaving his apartment on Leontyevsky Lane, Stanislavsky met with the actors at home, turning rehearsals into acting school according to the method of psychophysical actions he developed.

Continuing the development of the “system”, following “My Life in Art” (American edition - 1924, Russian - 1926), Stanislavsky managed to send to print the first volume of “The Actor’s Work on Himself” (1938, posthumously).