Alfred Schnittke, "Revision Tale". Performance of the Taganka Theater "Revizskaya Tale"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The audit tale is today one of the excellent handwritten sources that help in conducting genealogical research. And also this is a wonderful performance of the Moscow Taganka Theater.

What is a revision tale?

These are documents that were necessary in order to take into account the number of population in the Russian Empire, for which an audit was carried out, which had the goal of taxing the population per capita. Such documents were in use in the 18th and 19th centuries. The revision tale is a list of the population of each province, indicating the names, patronymics, surnames, ages of all residents. Revision is the same census of the population. In rural areas, the census tales were compiled by the elders of villages and towns, and in the cities representatives of the city government were involved in this. In total, 10 revisions were carried out during the existence of such documents. Persons of both sexes, both men and women, were entered in the revision tales. But only men were included in the summary tables, women did not fit there. For example, the revision tales of the Orenburg province allow you to find out what kind of people lived in this area from 1834 to 1919. How many courtyards wereestates lived, how many were women, men, children, the elderly. Revision tales of the Orenburg province are now stored in the funds of the state archive.

The form of recording the collected information has changed three times. The persons included in this document were called revision souls. Such documents also allow us now to know which settlements were part of a particular region. For example, the revision tales of the Tambov province say that it included such villages as Olemenevo, Akselmeevo, Novoselki, Inina Sloboda; the villages of Zhdanaia, Nikolaevka, Forest Flowers and so on.

What does N. V. Gogol have to do with it?

Everyone knows that Nikolai Vasilyevich has a work called "Dead Souls". So, it is based not at all on the author's fantasy, but on a real historical fact that took place during the conduct of such revisions, which were mentioned above. Updates were made between censuses. That is, we can say that additional revisions were carried out. They were called upon to establish the presence of all the souls inscribed in the fairy tale during the previous census. If for any reason a person was absent (died, etc.), then this data was recorded.

According to the rules, the clarifications of the revision tales were already attributed to the subsequent census. The missing soul was considered available until the next revision, even if the person died. Thus, the state increased the collection of per capita tax. But for the unclean at hand, thanks to this,excellent conditions for using this rule for your own purposes. It is the fact of such abuse that is reflected in the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol "Dead Souls".

"Revizskaya Tale" of the Taganka Theater

"Revizskaya Tale" - a performance that was staged in the 70s of the 20th century by Yuri Lyubimov at the Taganka Theater, which he directed until the last days of his life and where he was the main director. The music for the performance was written by the composer Alfred Schnittke, it is called the "Gogol Suite". The “Revizskaya Tale” of the Taganka Theater sets itself the goal of revealing to the viewer the inner world of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, showing the drama of his soul. The main emphasis in the performance is made on plastic solutions. In the performance, the words from the work “Dead Souls” sound: “Rus! What do you want from me?.. And why did everything that is in you turn eyes full of expectation on me? Thus, the main motive of the fate of N. V. Gogol himself, who asked the question of what it means to “be a writer” in our country, breaks into the performance.

The staging "Revizskaya Tale" includes excerpts from various works of Nikolai Vasilievich - these are "Dead Souls", "Overcoat", "Notes of a Madman", Inspector General", "Portrait", "Nose", "Author's Confession" and even those Gogol texts that had never before been spoken from the stage. In the performance, all the means of stage expression are used together, which are subject to one meaning, the actors use a special manner of playing, thanks to which the production corresponds to the main idea of V. E. Meyerhold - you need to play not only the play itself, but also "the whole author" as a whole. The Taganka Theater in its own way presented the plot of "Dead Souls" to the viewer. "Revizskaya Tale" is a production that requires the audience to respond to the sharpness of the public sense. In the performance, the characters are shown as similar to monuments, which reflect the image of the dead immobility that was inherent in the surrounding N. V. Gogol's life. Now the production of "Revizskaya Tale" has been withdrawn from the repertoire of the Taganka Theater.

Music for the play

“The clash of the sublime and the base in his writings, the use of the banal – all this, of course, influenced me to a great extent. A hit is a good mask for any devilry, a way to get into the soul. So the composer Alfred Schnittke spoke about the work of N. V. Gogol. It is no coincidence that the "Revizskaya Tale" was filled with music to such an extent. Nikolai Vasilyevich was a very musical person. He attached great importance to this type of art. The writer knew musical notation. Operas were created based on the plots of his works. The creation of A. Schnittke "Revision Tale" is a production in which music is an integral part, it plays an important role here, thanks to it the necessary space and time of action are created on the stage of the theater.

Storyline in music

Suite A. Schnittke, which sounds during the "Revision Tale", consists of eight parts:

1. "Overture".
2. Childhood of Chichikov.
3. "Portrait".
4. Overcoat.
5. Ferdinand VIII.
6. "Officers".
7. "Ball".
8. "Will".

Characters of the play

The main character of the play "Revizskaya Tale" was Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol himself. The rest of the characters are characters from the writer's works:

• Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov.
• Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin.
• Andrey Petrovich Chertkov.
• Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin.
• Spanish King Ferdinand VIII.
• An unnamed ballet dancer whose body is at the departmental table, but whose soul is in the theater.

Summary of the play

After the overture had finished, a small sprout appeared before the audience, which grew and turned into the head of a child. She is wearing a cap. The head was fed with porridge from a spoon, it ate with great appetite and gradually became huge. Then a gentleman appeared from it, an average one, or rather no one. This is Chichikov. In the background to what is happening on the stage, there are words about a boy who knew how to save and save money. Further action is a fragment from the story "Portrait". Shown here is an Artist who lost his fame. Because of this, he falls into despair, loses the ability to create new worthy works of art, he has a desire to take revenge on the whole world for this and destroy all masterpieces. Now the performance is transferred to the story "The Overcoat". This piece of clothing here gets a different incarnation - it's not clothes, but a living woman - a friend, wife, whom the main character loves very much. The next part of the performance is a fragment of the story "Officers". There are many of them, they are all the same, nameless, they all have the same standing white collars and creaking feathers. A kind of endless anthill of human souls, some of them, perhaps, long dead, is replaced by a ball scene. The main character is on stage again, he is surrounded by the characters he created, they laugh at him, make faces and make faces at him.

Author of the play idea

Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov - actor, director, artistic director of the Taganka Theater and creator of the play "Revizskaya Tale" - was born on September 30, 1917 in Yaroslavl. In 1922 he moved to Moscow with his parents, older brother and younger sister. In 1934, Yu. Lyubimov entered the studio school at the Moscow Art Theater-2. In 1936 he was admitted to the school at the E. Vakhtangov Theatre. After graduation, in 1941, Y. Lyubimov was drafted into the army, where he served in the Song and Dance Ensemble, organized in order to maintain the morale of the soldiers.

After the war, Yuri Lyubimov went to work as an actor at the E. Vakhtangov Theater. In parallel with his work in the theater, he acted in films. In 1959, Yuri Petrovich tried himself as a director. His production was a resounding success, and he was invited to take the place of the head of the Taganka Theater.

Role players

Wonderful actors were involved in the production of "Revizskaya Tale". Gogol N. V. was talentedly played by the People's Artist of Russia Felix Antipov. The performance was played by actors known to the general public forfilm roles: Ivan Bortnik, Veniamin Smekhov, Boris Khmelnitsky, and other great artists.