January 31, 1901
The Moscow Art Theatre hosted the premiere of Chekhov's Three Sisters to a sold-out crowd.
If only I knew, if only I knew!
(Olga's final line from "Three Sisters")
Write a play called "Three Sisters" Chekhov asked after the successful productions of The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. In correspondence with Gorky He mentioned that "the action takes place in a provincial town like Perm." According to one version, the Prozorov sisters were based on the Perm enlightener sisters Zimmerman, who opened the first private school in the city.
While working on it, the author almost abandoned the idea: he called it “boring nonsense” and was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to cope with 14 characters (“perhaps I’ll get confused and give up writing”).
The actors and director perceived Three Sisters as a drama, but Chekhov disagreed.
Until his death he could not come to terms with the fact that his Three Sisters was a difficult drama of Russian life, and he was sincerely convinced that it was a funny comedy, almost a vaudeville.
(Konstantin Stanislavsky)
Chekhov attended rehearsals and revised the play right up until the premiere. He prepared the production first Stanislavsky, later replaced him Nemirovich-Danchenko, who sought to convey the simple flow of life on stage:
Name day, Maslenitsa, fire, departure, stove, lamp, piano, tea, pie, drunkenness, twilight, night, living room, dining room, girls' bedroom, winter, autumn, spring
Stanislavsky played the role of Vershinin in the play, and Tuzenbach played Vsevolod Meyerhold. She played Masha in the premiere production Olga Knipper-Chekhova.
So what? If they won't give us tea, then let's at least philosophize.
(Vershinin)
Happy is he who does not notice whether it is summer or winter
(Masha)
On the day of the premiere, the theater was packed. Chekhov left the city to avoid receiving any news about how the performance went.
After the first act, there were thunderous calls; the actors came out to the audience about twelve times. After the second act, they came out once. After the third, a few people applauded timidly, and the actors couldn't come out, and after the fourth, they were called out once. It took a great deal of stretching to telegraph Anton Pavlovich that the play was a great success.
(Konstantin Stanislavsky)
The public appreciated the play only three years after the first production:
She began to laugh and become quiet where the author wanted it.
(Konstantin Stanislavsky)
Stanislavsky himself called Three Sisters Chekhov's "most successful play."
Throughout the 20th century, directors gave it a new sound.
In 1940, the play was re-staged by 83-year-old Nemirovich-Danchenko, and it created a sensation.
The very first act—the sisters' return to life after their father's death and their discovery of hope—seemed to symbolize the end of the Great Terror. The characters, in their monologues about their "longing for a better life," looked not to the future, but to the past. Until the end of the Stalin era, it seemed the only performance commensurate with its era.
(theater critic Vadim Gaevsky)
In 1964, at the end of the Thaw, he staged his own version of Three Sisters Georgy Tovstonogov — at the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater. The success was ensured by a brilliant stage design: the director, befitting the era, slowed down time as much as possible, thereby evoking a growing sense of protest.
In 1981, the director Yuri Lyubimov He staged "Three Sisters" at the Taganka Theatre, with the characters' monologues no longer addressed to each other, but to the audience. Recordings of actors' voices from earlier performances were played. In one scene, the theatre wall slid open, revealing a corner of modern Moscow and random passersby.
In 1997, another legendary “reading” of Chekhov: Oleg Efremov staged "Three Sisters" at the Moscow Art Theater. In it, the Prozorov house was depicted as an endlessly rotating circle, and at the end, it receded into the distance and disappeared among the trees.
The modern production offered by the Moscow Art Theatre is the director's version Konstantin Bogomolov: "an emotional and everyday thing" about ordinary people, "without unnecessary symbolism and philosophizing."
