And the influence of Blok’s drama The Fair Show Booth on the concept of Petrouchka is evident. The Fair Show Booth, produced by Meyerhold in Petersburg in 1906, was the first to present the suffering marionette Pierrot (Petrouchka in Russia) on the Russian stage within the framework of a modernistic “little theater.” In this production Meyerhold strikingly combined music, dance, and dramatic action.
In February 1910, when Fokine staged a small ballet to Schumann’s Carnival for a benefit for the Petersburg magazine Satirikon, Meyerhold appeared as Pierrot. This was a reprise of his performance of Pierrot in Blok’s The Fair Show Booth, where Meyerhold appeared in white overalls with long sleeves: a sad marionette with angular movements, emitting pathetic moans from time to time. Meyerhold’s Pierrot was the direct predecessor of Nijinsky’s Petrouchka, who captivated the Paris audience of the Ballets Russes.
Contemporary French critics also wrote about the influence of Dostoyevsky on Petrouchka; the initiated sought hints and parallels with the scandalous liaison between Nijinsky and Diaghilev, in which the impresario allegedly played the role of the magician manipulator, and the dancer that of the poor marionette; but no one mentioned Blok or Meyerhold.
Petersburg had first caught the imagination of the European literary audience through Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It was a mysterious metropolis, similar to Dickens’s London and Balzac’s Paris, but more severe and scarier because of its distance and strangeness. For the European reader of Dostoyevsky, the exoticism of Petersburg had sinister overtones. Petrouchka was a different matter altogether. The tragedy of its plot was deftly wrapped up in nostalgic ethnicity.
After his heady European success, Petersburg seemed to Stravinsky “sadly small and provincial.”33 But, in fact, Petrouchka was greeted by Western audiences as an exotic, nationalistic work that succeeded in presenting the theme of Petersburg from a new aspect. Following the London premiere, the Times wrote, “The whole thing is refreshingly new and refreshingly Russian, more Russian, in fact, than any ballet we have had.”34
It was extremely significant for the fate of the Petersburg mythos in Europe that Petrouchka was perceived by Western critics as an innovative work. “It is supremely clever, supremely modern, and supremely baroque,” marveled the London Observer in 1913, perceptively summarizing several of the striking features of the Petersburg avant-garde later echoed in the works of Vladimir Nabokov.35
The Petrouchka of Stravinsky-Benois-Fokine-Diaghilev was the first Russian work to give Western audiences an idealized and romanticized image of Petersburg. And how fitting that this nostalgic image was created primarily in western Europe, mostly by semi-émigrés under the aegis of a semi-émigré enterprise. This is probably the only way that truly nostalgic works are born.
The imperial ballet school where the young Georges Balanchivadze lived and studied functioned almost as a monastery. The life of the pupils moved in strict rhythm under iron control; diligence was rewarded and disobedience punished, often with the maximum public humiliation. Pupils rose early, washed with icy water from a huge tank with numerous faucets, went for a walk under the viligant eye of their supervisor, and at ten in the morning began their lessons in classical dance. Then they studied academic subjects: literature, arithmetic, geography, history. Toward evening they had another session of dance. In the evening they did their homework and played piano. At eleven they went to sleep in a huge dormitory.
They were fed four times a day at a long table covered with a white cloth; the food was hearty, varied, and tasty. They had to eat quickly and make no mess. Their spiritual needs were served by the school church: they had early prayers before breakfast, and, during Passion Week, the last week of Lent before Easter, they were expected to go to confession and communion.
Like his school friends Georges could be certain of his future. After graduation, pupils were guaranteed a place at the Maryinsky Theater, the title of Artist of the Imperial Theaters, an excellent salary, and an early and generous pension. If they did their work diligently and flawlessly, they did not have to worry about anything else. It was often said in those days, “Those ballet people have all their brains in their feet.”36
