there was a typhoid scare.40
Suvorin assumed that Chekhov himself would soon move to Petersburg, where most writers indeed naturally gravitated. During his first meeting with Alexander in January 18 87, he baldly declared that Moscow was no place for a 'thinking person'.41 Chekhov also toyed for a long time with the thought of moving to Petersburg,42 but it was more an escapist fantasy than anything else. As someone with incipient tuberculosis, the city's notoriously damp climate meant he could never seriously contemplate moving north. Also, he was a dutiful son, and felt an obligation to look after his impoverished parents, so he had to content himself with short trips of a few weeks' duration. Although his longest visit, in 1893, lasted a month, Petersburg never occupied the place in his affections that Moscow did. His ambivalent feelings about the city, which stemmed partially from becoming the subject of incessant gossip, became more pronounced after the disastrous production of his play The Seagull in 1896. St Petersburg may have been the centre of Russian intellectual life, but there was a coldness to it which Chekhov did not like.
Ill Chekhov and the Imperial Theatres
As you go along Nevsky, you glance towards the Haymarket: clouds the colour of smoke, the setting sun a crimson globe – Dante's hell!
Notebook No. 1
New forms of life follow always new forms in literature (the precursors), and that is why they will always be so abhorrent to the conservative human spirit.
Notebook No. 1
In January 1889, a revised version of Chekhov's play Ivanov was given its Petersburg premiere, following its first performance in Moscow just over a year earlier. The Moscow production had taken place at the privately owned theatre run by Fyodor Korsh. In Petersburg, Ivanov was staged at the state-run Alexandrinsky, still at that time the most important drama theatre in Russia. For most of the nineteenth century, the Russian government maintained successful control of theatrical life in Petersburg and Moscow, banning private companies from performing during the main season. In Petersburg, the Alexandrinsky and the Mikhailovsky were the state-owned venues for spoken drama. After the state monopoly was lifted in 1882, impresarios were quick off the mark in the more entrepreneurial Moscow, the merchant capital (Korsh opened his theatre the same year), but it took over a decade for private theatres to establish themselves properly in the more staid capital.
In the meantime, the 'Alexandrinsky', the elegant classical theatre built by Rossi in 1832 and named after the wife of Nicholas I, remained the most important stage in the capital for drama. Since the theatre was government- run, there was no problem with funding: it had plenty of money to hire the best technicians, the best producers and the best
The Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, where The Seagull premiered in 1896
– I.- -
actors if it so desired (another reason why it took a while before private companies were in a position to compete). But the government's tastes in art were as reactionary as its tastes in politics, so neither the repertoire, nor the manner in which plays were produced offered much in the way of artistic excitement. And like any other government department, the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres was run by bureaucrats, who ensured that the path from the initial submission of a new play to opening night was as complicated as possible. Fortunately for Chekhov, he had his friend Suvorin on hand to conduct all the negotiations with the Imperial Theatres on his behalf for the staging of Ivanov at the Alexandrinsky. Suvorin knew all the right people and was familiar with procedures at the theatre. Standing in the middle of the city in its own square, just off Nevsky Prospekt, the enormous yellow building could seat nearly 2,000 people, so the production of new plays was not entered into lightly. But having your play staged at the Alexandrinsky was hardly a casual undertaking for authors either.
Chekhov travelled up from Moscow a couple of weeks before the first night of Ivanov in order to attend rehearsals. The wrangles he had with the actor playing the lead did not inspire confidence: Vladimir Davydov had played Ivanov in the original Moscow production, but the part had now changed and he did not understand it. There were other casting problems, which caused the date of the premiere to be delayed by a few days. Despite Chekhov's misapprehensions, however, Ivanov proved to be a huge success, and the author was given a standing ovation after the third act. The enthusiastic reviews which appeared in New Times and The Petersburg Newspaper only enhanced Chekhov's already high standing in the eyes of the Petersburg public. Suvorin's wife wrote to Chekhov that in seven years of going to the Alexandrinsky, she had never been so moved. She was one of many friends and admirers who wrote to him in similarly ecstatic terms.43 At some point during this visit, Chekhov had his photograph taken at Shapiro's studio on Nevsky Prospekt. A few months later his brother Alexander wrote to tell him that Shapiro had put the portrait in his window and that it was attracting a lot of attention from passers-by. On one occasion Alexander eavesdropped on the conversation of a group of young ladies as they stood there with their faces pressed to the glass, and reported to his brother that they had detected passion
in his eyes, and had even admired his tie. He was most disgruntled, however, that none of them had talked about his brother's soul or his intelligence.44
Hot on the heels of Ivanov came Chekhov's one-act farce The Bear. It created a furore when it was premiered at the Alexandrinsky on 7 February 1889. The female lead, Elena Popova ('a comely widow landowner with dimples in her cheeks'), was played by the great Maria Savina, and when Chekhov fulminated against Petersburg theatre in 1901, he made an exception for her, as well as a partial exception for Davydov. The Bear had become a favourite with the amateur dramatics fraternity all over Russia after its first performance in Moscow the previous October. Even before the Petersburg premiere, Chekhov was proudly able to inform his friends that it had been enthusiastically staged by the Imperial Ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs in their home-spun productions.45 And then there was Chekhov's other perennially popular one-act farce The Proposal, which was premiered in St Petersburg on 12 April at a small chamber theatre, and then staged at the Alexandrinsky on 12 September. That summer even royalty had dabbled with Chekhov. On 10 August, the Alexandrinsky actor Pavel Svobodin wrote to tell Chekhov that he had just acted in The Proposal before the Tsar. The command performance had taken place in the little wooden theatre located in Krasnoe Selo, just outside the city, where the troops were stationed during the summer months. The theatre employed members of the imperial troupes to perform comedies, operettas and ballets for members of court and other highly placed officials while they were at their dachas. Svobodin reported to Chekhov that the imperial family and their retinue had much enjoyed the show, with Alexander III laughing particularly loudly. Indeed, he said, the cast had received two curtain calls, which was unheard of in that stuffy, protocol-infested theatre. The Tsar's Eye may have been disapproving, but the Tsar himself not only read Chekhov, but was a fan, it turned out, when the actors were presented to him afterwards.46 Chekhov was very amused. 'I am awaiting the order of St Stanislav and appointment to the State Council,' he wrote to a friend.47 That was unlikely, however, as the Tsar did not really know who he was. Alexander III saw The Bear many times, and invariably went to congratulate Svobodin on his performance in the title role, telling him how much he had laughed. He would also invariably ask who the author was. 'The author of
Ivanov,' Svobodin would reply. 'Ah, Ivanov!' the Tsar would exclaim, 'jolly good!'48
Chekhov had made a name for himself in St Petersburg literary circles as a prose writer, and now he had
