In Petersburg, as always, the cult of Nevsky Prospect thrived. In an almost ritual parade, high-placed bureaucrats and lowly clerks, naval and army officers, important gentlemen, nouveaux riches, and bohemians sauntered along the street. Some moved with the precise tread appropriate to capital denizens, while others gawked around, turning to follow pretty ladies, in attempts to flirt. Many stared at the enticing shop windows that carried expensive goods from all over the world.
Oysters from Paris, lobsters from Ostend, flowers from Nice! The aristocracy particularly liked the English Shop on Nevsky, where, as Vladimir Nabokov later recalled, one could buy all sorts of comforting things: fruitcakes, smelling salts, Pears soap, playing cards, picture puzzles, striped blazers, talcum-white tennis balls, and football jerseys in the color of Cambridge and Oxford.
Nevsky Prospect was also called the street of banks. Of the fifty buildings making up the section from the Admiralty to the Fontanka, there were banks in twenty-eight, including the Russian-British, the Russian-French, and the Russian-Dutch branches. In the passageway from Nevsky Prospect to Mikhailovsky Square were the jewelers: diamonds on black velvet, blinding brooches, expensive rings and necklaces. Signs, announcements, and stylish posters, many done in the fashionable
The capital’s fashionable idlers stopped by the poster column: where should they go tonight? Petersburg had three operas, a famous ballet company, a lively operetta, and opulent theaters for every taste—from the very respectable, imperially subsidized Alexandrinsky, which tended to stage serious plays, to the frivolous Nevsky Farce, known for its topical parodies of famous contemporaries. The “decadent” Meyerhold was being parodied there. He had recently been asked to direct at the Alexandrinsky Theater, where his premiere of a Knut Hamsun drama had been a terrible flop. How could they have let a thirty-four-year-old upstart, with outlandishly modernist attitudes, take charge at the imperial theater? Now, they said, he was planning to “modernize” Wagner at the Maryinsky Opera. We’ll see, we’ll see….
The year 1908 brought forth Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse on the Petersburg stages. The posters proudly announced the appearance of a flashy conductor, Arthur Nikisch, who was a brilliant interpreter of Tchaikovsky, though connoisseurs really preferred the more serious conducting style of Gustav Mahler, who had recently been a hit in the capital.
Pablo Casals was playing Bach and tickets were available. How about going to that? Especially since if you weren’t a subscriber it was almost impossible to get tickets to the Maryinsky, where people lined up the night before. Students and young ladies warmed themselves by bonfires so that they could rush the box office at ten the next morning—and hope for the best. The great draw there was the incredibly popular basso Fyodor Chaliapin in the exotic opera
Chaliapin was appearing in the role of the villainous Babylonian Holofernes. One habitue observed acidly that when the giant Chaliapin, moving with the grace of a panther, approached the footlights, reached out with his bare arms, and sang in his thunderingly resonant basso, “This city has many wives! Its streets are paved with gold! Beat them and trample them with horses—you’ll be the city’s new king!” chills ran down the spines of the beautiful ladies in full dress and the important gentlemen sitting in the light blue velvet chairs at the imperial theater. The memory of revolutionary 1905 was still fresh.
When the performance ended, Chaliapin, still in heavy makeup and his ornate “Assyrian” costume, would go up to the huge scenery workshop located over the hall at the Maryinsky Theater. The artist Alexander Golovin would work until morning on the singer’s portrait in the role of Holofernes. Almost sixty years later, barely keeping up with the tireless Leningrad choreographer Leonid Yakobson, I ran up those endless, narrow stairs, which Chaliapin with his large entourage had ascended so majestically. “So this is where they all went,” I thought, entering the spacious room, empty but so alive for me with its splendid ghosts. There stood the legendary Chaliapin, his guests, and Golovin, the most fashionable stage designer of Petersburg, the silver-haired darling of its high society.
