Abstract
A number of scholars have noted the theatricality of the late eighteenth-century Russian estate house.’ What follows is an exploration of this theme: specifically, the ways in which estate design reflected the interdependency of architecture and theatre in this age, as well as a pervasive theatricality in elite culture. To some extent the linkage of architecture and theatre is obvious, for architecture has always been an attempt to create an ideal environment, while theatre likewise seeks to alter one’s perception of space and time. In Russia these two transforming fields converged and overlapped in the design of the eighteenth-century estate house, whether imperial or private residence.
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Notes
For the pre-revolutionary period, see particularly Baron N. Vrangel’, ‘V byloe vremia’, Starye gody, nos. 7–9 (1910), pp 35–51;
more recently, M. A. Anikst and V. S. Turchin, Vokrestnostiakh Moskvy: lz istorii russkoi usadebnoi kul’tury XVII–XIX vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979).
Geoffrey Beard, The Work of Robert Adam (London: Bloomsbury Books, 1987) p. 4.
It was to be a combination of castle, citadel and monument, like the battle scene from a Handel oratorio, complete with fanfares of trumpets and drums.’ Gervase Jackson-Stops and James Pipkin, The English Country House: A Grand Tour (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1985) p. 33.
James Cracraft’s masterful study, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), describes the extraordinary process of transformation in the early part of the century.
For a synopsis of the careers of Rastrelli père et fils see William Craft Brumfield, Gold in Azure (Boston: David R. Godine Publishers, Inc., 1983) pp. 253–75.
Their careers are summarised in V. Kurbatov, ‘Perspektivisty i dekoratory’, Starye gody no. 3 (1911) pp. 114–25. Of the theatricality of this age Kurbatov notes that in the reign of Elizabeth some palaces had not one but two theatres, and that ‘court life itself resembled an elaborate spectacle’ (p. 117).
The sketch appears on pp. 4–5 of the illustrations in A. Glumov, N. A. L’vov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980).
Robert and James Adams, Works in Architecture (1773), cited in Beard, Robert Adam p. 6.
The drawing is reproduced in N. A. Evsina, Arkhitekturnaia teoriia v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII—nachala XIX veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1985) p. 245.
A photograph of the curtain appears in Valerii Rapoport, Arkhangel’skoe: Dvorianskaia usad’ba XVIII–XIX vekov (Leningrad: Aurora, 1984) plate 86.
Photographs of the Pashkov mansion and Bykovo church appear on pp. 6–7 of the second set of illustrations in Iu. S. Iaralov, Zodchie Moskvy (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1981). Bazhenov’s architectural fantasies of the 1760s and sketch for Tsaritsyno of 1776 are reproduced in Evsina, Arkhitekturnaia teoriia pp. 202, 204, and 205.
R. M. Baiburova, ‘Zal i gostinaia usadebnogo doma russkogo klassitsizma’, in Pamiatniki russkoi arkhitektury i monumental’nogo iskusstva (ed.) V. P. Vygolov (Moscow: Nauka, 1983) pp. 110–30.
A. P. Vergunov and V. A. Gorokhov, Russkie sady i parki (Moscow: Nauka, 1988) pp. 178–200.
D. S. Likhachev, Poeziia sadov: K semantike sadovo-parkovykh stilei (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982) p. 269.
See Lotman’s suggestive essay ‘Theater and Theatricality as Components of Early Nineteenth-Century Culture’, in Ann Shukman (ed.) The Semiotics of Russian Culture (Ann Arbor, 1984) pp. 141–60.
For a reproduction, see V. Pushkarev, Leningrad v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve (Leningrad: Aurora, 1975) plate 79.
M. V. Alpatov et al. (eds.) Istoriia russkogo iskusstva 3 vols (Moscow: Izd. Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1979) vol. 2, colour plate 9.
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© 1994 International Council for Soviet and East European Studies and John O. Norman
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Roosevelt, P. (1994). Eighteenth-century Estate Design and Theatrical Illusion. In: Norman, J.O. (eds) New Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Artistic Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23190-4_2
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