• 1 Nikolai Akimov, “O postanovke ‘Gamleta’ v Teatre im. Vakhtangova” [On the production of Hamlet at t (...)

The goal of my mise-en-scène was to read and show Hamlet anew, ridding it from all that has been added to it through the three hundred and more years that separate us from the time of its writing.1

• 2 I should like to thank Dr Yan Brailowsky and Professors Evgeny Dobrenko, Michèle Barbe, David Fanni (...)

1Shakespeare not only reflects the social, political and cultural discourses of a given society but also has a role in forming them.2 At the same time this cultural exchange feeds back into a fuller understanding of the potential resonance of his work. As a case study for Shakespeare appropriations in Central and Eastern European culture that work within, and arguably to some extent against, the socio-political framework of the time and place, this paper re-evaluates Nikolai Akimov’s scandalous production of Hamlet in 1932 at Moscow’s Vakhtangov theatre with Dmitri Shostakovich’s music. His words, quoted at the head of this article, are paradoxical in the sense that they suggest a return to the original: a claim, which hardly anyone in that audience would have believed was part of his intentions.

• 3 See Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931, Bloomington, Indiana Univers (...)
• 4 See Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky, The Soviet Theatre: A Documentary History, New Haven, Y (...)

2The period between Stalin’s consolidation of power in 1928 and the first mention of Socialist Realism in 1932, is now frequently referred to as the Soviet Union’s Cultural Revolution.³ During this time proletarian groups were vocal in their critical attitudes and yet many theatre productions continued in the avant-garde spirit of the 1920s. With hindsight it is clear that a new era was ushered in by the Central Committee 23 April 1932 Resolution “On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organisations”, which dethroned RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) and instituted artistic unions. No significant production of Hamlet took place in the preceding transitional period.⁴ But in 1931 a new production was mooted that would turn into a controversial event in theatre history of the country, caught as it was on the cusp between one social-aesthetic paradigm and another.

• 5 Almost every study or mention of this production describes it as a scandal or at least as a controv (...)
• 6 T. Rokotov, “‘Sheksperiment’ realisticheskogo teatra” [The Shakesperiment of a realist theatre], Ve (...)
• 7 Nikolai Akimov, “Otrivki o nenapisannoi biografii” [Excerpts from an unwritten biography], in N. Ak (...)

3Akimov’s Hamlet has justly been described as one of the most notorious milestones in the history of Shakespeare theatre productions.⁵ It was not just Akimov’s controversial scenic solutions but also Shostakovich’s extrovert music that contributed to this production being designated as a “Shakesperiment” with the music eventually garnering more praise than the production itself, and enjoying a notably more successful after-life.⁶ The premiere, which took place on 19 May, marked the beginning of Akimov’s theatre directing career – he had previously worked as a stage designer and artist – and at the same time the end of his collaboration with the Muscovite theatre.⁷

• 8 Alexander Bartoshevich, Akimov, Leningrad, Teakluba, 1933, p. 23.
• 9 Akimov, “Otrivki o nenapisannoi biografi”, op. cit., p. 345.
• 10 Ibid.

4Born in 1901 in Kharkov (in present-day Ukraine), from 1914 Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov began taking drawing lessons in St Petersburg from various masters, including artists of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) circle.⁸ “From early childhood I had chosen my profession irrevocably”, he wrote. “I was to become a [visual] artist. I never had any intention of working in theatre. Later everything turned out the other way round.”⁹ From the first instance of independent work in the Kharkov Children’s Theatre in 1922, he functioned “not just as an artist in theatre but as a theatre artist”.¹⁰

• 12 For more on the history of the Theatre, see Nick Worrall, Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage: (...)
• 13 Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theatre: Traditions and the Avant-garde, London, Thames an (...)

6Akimov’s Hamlet was commissioned to celebrate the jubilee year of the Theatre, ten years on from the death of its founder Evgeny Vakhtangov (1883-1922) and his most famous production, Princess Turandot.¹² Despite being loyal to Stanislavski’s psychological approach, Vakhtangov, who had accepted the Revolution quickly and without reservation, was greatly influenced by Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theatricality and anti-realism. Impressed by Roman Rolland’s Théâtre du peuple, Vakhtangov set himself the task of giving art a sharper outline without falsifying its truthfulness to life.¹³

• 14 For more on Chekhov’s Hamlet, see V. Ivanov, “MKhAT vtoroy rabotaet nad ‘Gamletom’. Gamlet - Mikhai (...)
• 15 Aspects of the scenario detailed in this paragraph and below are widely attested. See also the prod (...)

7Following the more Meyerholdian side of Vakhtangov, Akimov decided to distance himself as much as possible from the most notable recent production of Hamlet featuring Mikhail Chekhov, which had premiered at MKhAT II (Second Moscow Academic Art Theatre) in 1924.¹⁴ In Akimov’s conception, Hamlet was no philosopher. Played by Anatoly Goryunov, an actor mostly known as a comedian, he was a chubby, short, witty bon-vivant, a young man fighting for his right to be the King of Denmark. Thus the plot was emptied of its usual enigmas and instead focused on one main intrigue: the struggle for the Danish throne. Horatio’s role was considerably strengthened to represent at once an image of the “eternal student”, the failing intellectual and a caricature of Erasmus, whose words Akimov incorporated at some length. Acting as Hamlet’s double, Horatio joined him in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, turning it into a dialogue, in the course of which Hamlet tried on a papier-mâché crown left over from the actors’ rehearsal. The iconic Ghost scene was completely reinterpreted. Inspired by Erasmus’s Colloquies, Akimov evoked a masquerade, where Hamlet pretends to be the ghost and Horatio helps him by making spooky noises with the help of a clay pot, by which means the two men try to attract more supporters for their cause. The dialogue between Hamlet and his father’s ghost was hence turned into a monologue for Hamlet, in what is effectively a mirror image of Akimov’s treatment of “To be or not to be”.¹⁵

• 16 The theatre historian Konstantin Rudnitsky rather unguardedly suggests that “Akimov’s production mo (...)
• 17 See for example Martin Banham, “Nikolai Akimov”, The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, Cambridge Universi (...)
• 18 “Al. K-ov”, “‘Byt ili nye byt’ Postanovki ‘Gamleta’ v teatre imeni Vakhtangova” [To be or not to be (...)
• 19 Nikolai Akimov, “Shekspir, prochitanni zanovo. O ‘Gamlete’ v teatre im. Vakhtangova” [Reading Shake (...)
• 20 Akimov’s Hamlet only survived one season in Moscow. In my personal exchange with Marina Zobolotnyay (...)
• 21 For one of the clearest statements of a perceived gap between conception and realisation, and a rem (...)

9Even today, some of Akimov’s decisions raise eyebrows.¹⁶ Akimov’s Hamlet is often quoted in the context of formalism and Soviet censorship, which is just one aspect appearing mainly in later criticisms and studies of the production.¹⁷ Months before the premiere of the production, critics, Shakespeare scholars and Akimov himself had been debating whether there was any need at all for yet another production of Hamlet. Articles questioned the rationale behind returning to classics of theatre repertoire and recommended solutions to make them more appropriate for the proletarian audience.¹⁸ Akimov himself pre-announced intentions that were in most cases in line with the critical consensus.¹⁹ Thus there were high expectations of this production, which was widely considered to be an organised effort to bring Shakespeare back to “Soviet Reality”. However, for several reasons, aspects of Akimov’s concepts got lost in the process of realisation, contributing to the production’s short stage life.²⁰ In the immediate aftermath of the premiere, the general feeling among critics was one of disappointment. This Hamlet had proved to be merely a “Shakesperiment”, which, as it were, blew up in the laboratory.²¹ But in order to understand Akimov’s intentions more fully, we need to dig further back.

• 22 “Doklad N. P. Akimova o tragedii V. Shekspira ‘Gamlet’” [N.P. Akimov’s presentation on Shakespeare’ (...)
• 23 Ibid.
• 24 Akimov, “Shekspir, prochitanniy zanovo”, op. cit.

10Prior to the premiere of his Hamlet, Akimov outlined his plans and the details of his approach in a series of articles in the national press.²² Here he argued that since the appearance of Hamlet’s text, each era had interpreted this work in its own way, consciously or unconsciously using the play as a mirror to reflect the ideology of its time. And he announced that “the goal of any production of Hamlet in our days is to liberate it from such prisons”. The most dangerous of these prisons was, according to Akimov, the problem of “Hamletism” which he believed to have been superimposed on Shakespeare’s play by the Romantics of the 18^th and 19^th centuries and by Goethe in particular. Akimov noted that the birth and development of “Hamletism” ran parallel to the development of bourgeois ideology of the 19^th century. “This historical process, however interesting and educational it may be, does not relate to our specific task of staging Shakespeare’s dramaturgy”. His goal was accordingly to better understand and interpret “the Shakespeare of the 16^th century and not the Shakespeare of the 19^th”.²³ If the working material in the 19^th century consisted of Hamlet’s philosophical monologues, “our material is the holistic dramatic work of Shakespeare”.²⁴

• 25 Ibid.

11Referring to the more recent productions of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre by Stanislavsky and Gordon Craig in 1911 and at MKhAT II, starring Mikhail Chekhov in 1924, Akimov identified their basis in “idealistic philosophy”, which focused on “the battle of Spirit and Matter”. Akimov granted that, “it is not surprising if the symbolists, the idealists or the mystics didn’t use sociological analysis of Hamlet. But it will be most outrageous if we in 1932 were to do things the same way as our predecessors”. So instead of a “war of symbols and sources”, he conceived Hamlet as a realistic work about the life of real “living people of the 16^th century”.²⁵

• 26 Joseph Stalin, “Dialectical and historical materialism”, in Problems of Leninism, Peking, Foreign L (...)

12At the same time, he predicted that Hamletism and its attendant mysticism and other “falsifications”, were by then so deeply rooted in the audience’s sub-conscious that his more authentic Hamlet would paradoxically appear “false”. Akimov concluded that “in our time we should approach the question of interpretation of this work using dialectical materialism”, which was according to Stalin “the world outlook of the Marxist Leninist party”.²⁶

• 27 Akimov,“Kak teatr im. Vakhtangov stavit ‘Gamleta’”, Izvestiia Moskva, 26 March 1932.

13For Akimov Hamlet was “a highly developed, healthy, optimistic young man whose jokes sparkle throughout the five acts of the play [and who] dies while trying in vain to combine his advanced theories with feudalism in practice” in the society of his time. Akimov summarised his task as: “a creative interpretation of Hamlet using methods and devices of our theatre, considering the concrete situation of Shakespeare’s era.”²⁷

• 28 Akimov was alluding to Vissarion Belinski’s 1838 essay embracing Nikolai Polevoy’s translation and (...)
• 29 Lozinski’s translation was published for the first time a year after the premiere of Akimov’s produ (...)
• 30 According to Semenenko all Soviet translators had access to different versions of Shakespeare’s tex (...)
• 31 Akimov, “Kak teatr im. Vakhtangov stavit ‘Gamleta’”, op. cit.
• 32 Akimov, “O ‘Gamlete’”, op. cit.

14Akimov’s claims for, in effect, a fusion of authenticity and contemporary relevance went further. Regarding the problem of translating Shakespeare’s play into Russian, he maintained that previous translators, too, had served the ideology of their time, and that by adapting rather than translating accurately they had often taken part in the process of falsification. He illustrated this point through examples from “Belinsky’s Apocrypha”,²⁸ claiming that the new translation by Mikhail Lozinski²⁹ used for his own mise-en-scène³⁰ was “the first exact Russian translation both in form and artistic values”,³¹ and that “it depicts the character of Shakespeare’s language without the usual artificial varnish.”³²

• 33 Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1466-1536), often known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus: (...)
• 34 Akimov, “Shekspir, prochitanniy zanovo”, op. cit.
• 35 Akimov, “Kak teatr im. Vakhtangov stavit ‘Gamleta’”, op. cit.

15As for the presence of lines by Erasmus of Rotterdam,³³ this can be explained by Akimov’s intention of consciously freeing the play from Hamletism in favour of Humanism, the worldview centred on human agency rather than on the supernatural, dogma and, in more Marxist terms, social rankings. It was for the purposes of defending this conception, among other things, that Akimov turned to what he considered the essence of Elizabethan tragedies and their topicality, describing Hamlet as a “humanist of the 16^th century, well ahead of his time, an individualist dying within his feudal surroundings”.³⁴ In general, he explained, on behalf of the Theatre, “We try to re-evaluate the play in relationship to the philosophy of the 16^th century: that is, ‘humanism’ with references to Erasmus’s ‘Colloquies’.”³⁵

• 36 Meyerhold, “Meyerhold o svoyom Lese” (On my Forest), Novy zritel, no. 7, 1924, p. 6.
• 37 Edward Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre, 171, originally in Vestnik teatra, 1920, no. 72-73, p. 8-10.
• 38 For a bibliography of some of the literature on Meyerhold’s Inspector General see Sergei Danilov, R (...)
• 39 Silvija Jestrovic, “Theatricality as Estrangement of Art and Life in the Russian Avant-garde”, SubS (...)

16Akimov’s unconventional treatment of dramatic text could also be seen as a continuation and a toned-down version of Meyerhold’s dictum of the 1920s, which went as far as suggesting that “a play is simply the excuse for the revelation of its theme on the level at which that revelation may appear vital today.”³⁶ Elsewhere Meyerhold responded to accusations of “mutilating the classics” by explaining that “from each work we extract the scenario, sometimes retaining isolated moments of it. But isn’t this just how those dramatists worked who since their deaths have become so revered?”³⁷ The most coherent realisation of all Meyerhold’s concepts came in his tackling one of the most canonical texts of Russian literature, Gogol’s Inspector General. Altering Gogol’s original text and even adding to it, Meyerhold created an extended version of the play that included added characters, pantomimes and tableaux vivants.³⁸ Thus, through his methodology, “the play-text was taken from the realm of the dramatic into the realm of the theatrical.”³⁹ In 1926 such interventionist productions could command a degree of comradely support. However, the evolution of the cultural climate from then until 1932 meant that Akimov did not receive such backing for his untraditional treatment of Hamlet, and least of all from Meyerhold himself.

• 40 Nikolai Volkov, Meierkhol’d, Moscow and Leningrad, Akademiia, 1929, p. 26.

17For Meyerhold, the dream of staging Hamlet was a leitmotif of his entire career, never to be realised.⁴⁰ However, the constantly changing nature of his numerous references to the play reveals the evolving nature of his approach to Hamlet, and to theatre in general. On the other hand such inconsistency in Meyerhold’s concepts may also be understood as a result of the changes in the politico-cultural climate of the time and the artists’ obligations to manoeuvre accordingly.

• 41 Stenographic report from Meyerhold’s 1927 speech at the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonia, T (...)

18In 1927 he imagined for his Hamlet: “casting directly two actors for the role of Hamlet. Thus, one Hamlet will be playing one part of the role, and the other actor the other part.” This would have produced a striking anticipation of Akimov, at the point where, in Meyehold’s conception, “one Hamlet starts reciting ‘to be or not to be’, and the other Hamlet interrupts him and says: ‘But this is my monologue’, and burning in anger, the other says: ‘Well, I’ll just sit and eat an orange while you continue.’”⁴¹

• 42 Published as “Vs. Meierkhol’d, Put’ aktera” (Vs. Meyerhold, the actor’s path), Sovetskoe iskusstvo,(...)

19Despite having recently advocated such far-reaching potential alterations, when it came to Akimov’s production, Meyerhold took offense and accused the mise-en-scène of eclecticism: “I love the Vakhtangov Theatre”, he declared in a speech at the Theatre Workers’ Club on 26 January 1933, “but their latest, especially Cowardice and Love (Kovarstvo i lyubov) and Hamlet scared me. Eclecticism is the easiest thing. […] Hamlet is shifted from the point at which Shakespeare had put him. And the result is a mess.”⁴²

• 44 Stenographic report of discussions, 19 and 21 April 1932, Archive of Vakhtangov Theatre, Moscow, Fo (...)
• 45 Ibid.

21What Meyerhold and the critics were unaware of was that they were only seeing Akimov’s production after it had been extensively discussed, altered and abbreviated by the Theatre, subsequent to many rehearsals and particularly the discussions following the dress rehearsal on 19 April 1932. Taking place over two days, these discussions were attended by members of the crew and cast, and Akimov himself. The accounts of these sessions kept at the archive of the Vakhtangov Theatre reveal invaluable information on details of the mise-en-scène and its practicalities, on major concerns of the production team about certain aspects of the show, and on Akimov’s justification of his choices. ⁴⁴ Reading between the lines, we can glean from the debates something of how Akimov’s production was meant to be, had it not undergone such trials. It transpires that it was not Akimov’s eccentric interpretation of Hamlet that caused the main concerns for the production team – perhaps apart from his interpretation of Ophelia, which was flatly deemed “non-Shakespearean”.⁴⁵ What worried those present at the debates were: Akimov’s manipulation of Shakespeare’s text; the interpretation of Ophelia; the logical continuity of certain elements such as the clay pot used to evoke the ghost; and the overall length of the production (over five hours) and related logistics. Elsewhere, the directorial team was accused of turning Hamlet into Richard III, by concentrating solely on his thirst for power.

• 46 “Perviy disput o ‘Gamlete’ v teatre Vakhrangova” [The first discussion of Hamlet at the Vakhtangov (...)

22Such debates resulted in a production that was definitely shorter, but the cuts meant that it had lost many brilliant scenes and important themes, such as various chase scenes that had given it a special flavour. It was only natural for some critics to complain that “in general the architecture of the composition of the play was destroyed”.⁴⁶ But the blame should not have been laid at Akimov’s door alone.

• 50 Marina Zabolotnyaya, “Obsuzhdenie akimovskogo ‘Gamleta’. VTO. Kabinet Shekspira, 29 sent. 1943 g” [ (...)
• 51 See Rudnitsky, McBurney, op. cit.

What everyone seems to have forgotten, or simply ignored, was the conditions set by the Theatre repertoire committee (Repertkom) in 1931, when discussing and commissioning the production of Hamlet for the anniversary season of the Theatre. As Akimov himself later explained, at the time when his Hamlet was in progress the agenda had been very different from the time of the premiere: no rich person or royalty could possibly be a positive hero, and depicting the ghost as a metaphysical creature would also cause concerns. According to Akimov, his changes and interpretative choices made it possible to stage a tragedy of Shakespeare at a time when it was not on top of the authorities’ list of priorities.⁵⁰ Accordingly, what Akimov did was largely working towards the objectives set for him at the time. Of course within a year much had changed in the cultural and political climate of the country. In fact the Central Committee’s decree “On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organisations”, promulgated barely a month before the premiere, proved to be crucial in determining later views on the ill fate of the production.⁵¹ The reception of Akimov’s Hamlet was not merely reactive to the problematic mixture of the director’s conception and his realisation of it, but it was also to a degree prescribed. Had the production been staged at the time of its conception in 1931, it would most likely have had very different resonances for critics and public alike.

• 52 Personal conversation with Maria Zabolotnyaya, November 2013.
• 53 Stenographic report from meeting of art workers (rabotnikov iskusstv), 9 April 1936, RGALI, Fond 96 (...)

24Hamlet was shown in Moscow for only a single season in 1932/33.⁵² Yet its shadow followed Akimov throughout his life. In the gathering of artist workers discussing the 1936 Pravda article, “On the fight against formalism”, Akimov reminded participants that apart from Hamlet he had worked on 86 other productions, 19 of them following his doomed Hamlet, yet he could not redeem himself from the stigma of formalism as a result of his rendering of Shakespeare’s tragedy.⁵³

• 54 Akimov, “O postanovke ‘Gamleta’ v Teatre im. Vakhtangova”, Op. cit., p. 119; and Akimov, “O postano (...)

25Even so he was clearly not ready to step back and admit to his mistakes. In 1936 he published an informative essay outlining his reading of Shakespeare’s tragedy and his reasons for considering his interpretation more genuine and closer to the “Bard’s” intentions and to Elizabethan traditions than traditional Hamlets.⁵⁴ What was even more curious was that this directorial explication was published in the annus horribilis for artists, when most had to either stop creating or reconsider their former works to self-censure or pay the price.

• 55 Mikhail Morozov (1897-1952), Soviet Shakespeare scholar and theatre critic.
• 56 Marina Zabolotnyaya, introductory article to “Obsuzhdenie akimovskogo ‘Gamleta’”. VTO. Kabinet Shek (...)

26And this was not to be the last time that Akimov’s Hamlet was exhumed. In 1943, the Shakespeare Cabinet of the Soviet Union, headed by Mikhail Morozov,⁵⁵ returned to this production in a discussion session in the presence of Akimov and certain artists from the production, as well as other Shakespeare scholars. The stenographic notes from this session have been reproduced by Marina Zabolotnyaya.⁵⁶

• 57 With MKHAT and Stanislavsky/Nemirovich-Danchenko as numbers one and two; the Vakhtangov Theatre was (...)
• 58 Ivy Law, Moscow Daily News, 24 May 1932.

30If time was a healer for Soviet critics, for their western colleagues distance seemed to lend enchantment to the view. They at least seemed to notice many more positive aspects of Akimov’s production in the reviews following the premiere. Today it is almost inconceivable that a Soviet production of a Shakespeare’s tragedy by a newcomer at a young theatre, which could be considered Moscow’s number three theatre at the time,⁵⁷ should have attracted such global attention. Nevertheless, Akimov’s Hamlet found its way to the international press, including Danish, German, American and English publications, and it was generally viewed as at best a breakthrough masterpiece and at worst an interesting and unusual event.⁵⁸

• 59 Ibid.
• 60 Richard Watts Jr, New York Herald Tribune, 24 June 1932.

31One reason why many Western critics admired Akimov’s Hamlet had to do with its counterbalancing the contemporary trend to consider the play mainly as a vehicle for the star actor of the title role: a trend that still reins to the extent that many productions are merely known by the name of the lead actor (e.g. Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, David Tennant’s…) while the directors are often side-lined. By contrast, Akimov’s Hamlet was not just “the principal boy continually pursued by the spotlight, but a man among men”.⁵⁹ All this contributed to Richard Watts Jr from the New York Herald Tribune describing the production as “the best show in Europe”.⁶⁰

• 61 Anon., “V plane i razreze” [In the plan and the cut-away], Krokodil, No. 17, June 1932.

32If Akimov’s Hamlet as a whole had a mixed reception, critics were unanimous on one aspect: that Shostakovich’s incidental music was excellent. Even Krokodil could not help but praise it: “The composer Shostakovich leaves me in a very stupid situation as a critic. You see, when one writes for a satirical journal, one is supposed mainly to tell people off. But Shostakovich has composed such music that there is simply not a single fault with it. Amazing music!”⁶¹

• 62 Pavel Markov (1897-1980) was a theatre critic and head of literary section of Moscow Art Theatre.
• 63 Pavel Markov, O teatre, Moscow, Iskusstvo, 1977, Vol. 4 (diary of the theatre critic: 1930-1976), 6 (...)
• 64 Ibid.

33Other critics were not much different in preferring Shostakovich’s “magnificent” music to Akimov’s staging. The harshest words directed at Akimov were probably those of Pavel Markov,⁶² who complained that “At times it seems that the production is preventing us from hearing Shostakovich’s music, let alone Shakespeare.”⁶³ In this article Markov admitted to having detected brief echoes of Vakhtangov’s theatrical credo, not through Akimov’s production but thanks to Shostakovich’s music: “Only a few times, during the long duration of the show, could Vakhtangov’s principles be felt in it, and almost always this perception was caused not by the director’s interpretation nor by the actors’ skills, but by the music that Shostakovich composed in the teeth of Akimov.”⁶⁴ By pointing to contradictions between Shostakovich’s music and Akimov’s production, the critics were no doubt responding to the problematic relationship between the incidental music and the actual play.

• 65 For a rare study of theories of incidental music, see Kim Baston, Scoring performance: the function (...)
• 66 The two short letters that survive from the correspondence between these two men only reveal that S (...)

34Do these contradictions mean that Shostakovich’s music simply overpowered Akimov’s production and thus did not comply with the traditional subordinate function of incidental theatre music?⁶⁵ Or were they perhaps a result of lack of communication and close collaboration between the two artists? To this day, no document has emerged to prove that Shostakovich composed his music with any detailed knowledge of Akimov’s interpretative solutions.⁶⁶ Akimov and Shostakovich may well have elaborated their approaches at least to some extent independently, contributing to the apparent divergence between their readings. Even so, the little we do know about the background to Shostakovich’s score helps us to better understand its specific qualities and its relationship to the actual production, whether or not it was worked out through telephone conversations, meetings, or even letters that are now lost.

• 67 McBurney, “Shostakovich and the Theatre”, op. cit., p. 147.

35A study of the score and Shostakovich’s subsequent incidental music in conjunction with his other contemporary opuses reveals several instances of the composer’s reusing of his own material. The recycling of musical material between different productions and between his theatre music and other genres suggests that many of his ideas were in fact generic rather than specifically intended for a particular character or scene. This may have been a result of onerous working conditions and strict deadlines dictated by the theatres, to which Shostakovich reacted in his famous “Declaration” article in 1931 (see below); but it also illuminates the composer’s “cool-headed grasp of the way the same music could bear different meanings in different contexts.”⁶⁷ At any rate, for Shostakovich in his twenties, composing incidental music offered an opportunity to try his hand at diverse styles and aesthetic orientations, as well as to test out musical ideas from more ambitious ongoing projects, including most notably, his second opera, The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (1930-1932).

• 68 Roman Ilich Gruber, “Responses of Shostakovich to a Questionnaire on the Psychology of the Creative (...)

36This was Shostakovich’s first working encounter with Shakespeare, but it would be far from the last. It is curious that in 1929, replying to a questionnaire, the young Shostakovich had admitted to a dislike for Shakespeare’s work;⁶⁸ however, this was before he had engaged with any of the playwright works as a composer. The 1932 Hamlet seems to have left its mark, since from this point on he would return to Shakespeare at regular intervals during his career. Conceivably it may even have been an intimation of the director’s untraditional and eccentric approach that tempted Shostakovich into this collaboration, despite his earlier ambivalence towards Shakespeare and theatre music in general.

• 69 Shostakovich, “Deklaratsiia obiazennostei kompozitora” [Declaration of a composer’s duties], Raboch (...)
• 70 Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, New York, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 64.

37In November 1931, Shostakovich had published an extraordinary manifesto in the journal Rabochiy i teatr, entitled “Declaration of a composer’s duties”, attacking the state of music in the theatre world, and denouncing all his own theatrical and film music.⁶⁹ Although he promised to fulfil his contract to provide incidental music for Hamlet, he vowed to return the advances and cancel contracts for any other incidental music and to reject all future theatrical commissions for the next five years.⁷⁰

• 71 Ian MacDonald, The New Shostakovich, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 128.

38The fact that Shostakovich went ahead with Hamlet is easy to trivialise. It has been speculated that he had already spent the advances paid by the theatre, or that it was difficult to escape Akimov’s “convincing charm”.⁷¹ But one might equally propose that Hamlet appealed to him as an excellent opportunity to set an example of how incidental music might actually resist total “subordination to the theatrical institutions”.

• 72 For a recent sympathetic survey of his other contributions in the field, see McBurney, “Shostakovic (...)

39Shostakovich’s music to Hamlet was and remains the finest example of his theatre music.⁷² However, it is often assessed in isolation from the production itself, most analysis being based on the musical material from the orchestral suite which the composer derived from his score and which has entered the concert repertoire.

• 73 Yuri Yelagin, The Taming of the Arts, New York, Dutton, 1951, p. 35.
• 74 One such mistake, concerning the instrumentation of the recorder scene (which featured a parody of (...)

40Due to the lack of dramaturgical study of the music and production, and indeed the paucity of established theories for analysis of incidental music in general, even considered in its theatrical context, Shostakovich’s music is described as closer to Shakespeare’s Hamlet than anything else in Akimov’s mise-en-scène. This notion was first implanted by Yury Yelagin, a member of the Vakhtangov Theatre orchestra who emigrated to the West after the War, and who published his memoirs in English in 1951: “The music Shostakovich wrote for Hamlet was magnificent. Though it was very modern, it came closer to Shakespeare’s Hamlet than anything else in Akimov’s production.”⁷³ There is some truth in this observation. But the glaring mistakes that Yelagin makes while describing the music and its respective scenes indicate that his memory was, to say the least, fallible.⁷⁴ In fact, Akimov’s untraditional interpretation of the tragedy is directly reflected in Shostakovich’s music in several respects, not least in Shostakovich’s equally unusual choice of cabaret genres for several numbers, including one of Ophelia’s songs.

• 75 Christopher R. Wilson, “William Shakespeare”, in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, eds., The New Grov (...)
• 76 Ibid.

41In support of Yelagin’s observation, the 60 or so musical numbers of the piano score kept at the Vakhtangov Theatre archive are more or less divisible into the four categories Christopher R. Wilson lists as typical musical cues for incidental music to Shakespeare’s works: stage music, magic music, character music and atmospheric music.⁷⁵ In this way, all the fanfares, processions and transitional numbers belong to the category of stage music, while Ophelia’s songs and the gravedigger’s are “character music”. Wilson argues that “‘atmospheric music’ is the most subtle of the four categories, because it is concerned with such intangibles as mood, tone and emotional feeling, and because it may involve changes from suspicion to trust, from vengeance to forgiveness or from hatred to love.”⁷⁶ So it comes as no surprise that those numbers from Shostakovich’s score which could be designated “atmospheric” often belong to another category as well, and that it is by adding extra musical layers that the composer gives them subtle undertones, thereby musicalising the intangibles listed by Wilson. For example, “Hunt” is a “stage music” (quasi-onomatopoeic), which at the same time underlines Ophelia’s betrayal. The absence of “magic music” from Shostakovich’s score again weighs against Yelagin’s claim, in that the composer in this respect was closely following Akimov, who had omitted the ghost and any other supernatural features.

• 77 Pyotr Chaikovskiy, Polnoye sobraniye sochinenii, Vol. 2, Moscow, Muzyka, 1977, 301, quoted in Elena (...)

42In general Shostakovich’s music to Akimov’s Hamlet marked a new stage in Soviet/Russian Hamletiada, not least by tackling those aspects of Shakespeare’s tragedy that seemed inaccessible for music in the 19^th century, specifically its irony. In her study of Shostakovich’s music for Akimov’s Hamlet, Elena Zinkevich points out that this was a task that Tchaikovsky had famously declared impossible: “Music cannot find the means to reveal the irony that is hidden in the words of Hamlet.”⁷⁷ However, it should be pointed out that the context of Tchaikovsky’s remark had to do with his first encounter with Ambroise Thomas’ 1868 opera, Hamlet. Furthermore, Tchaikovsky was referring to Hamlet the hero rather than the play.

• 78 Richard Taruskin, “The Opera and the Dictator: the peculiar martyrdom of Dmitri Shostakovich”, The (...)

45Hence, and probably because he was trying out the musical ideas for his opera, Shostakovich’s most compelling disobedience of Akimov’s conception lay in his choice of style. Unlike many productions of Hamlet at the time, where the events of the play take place in the Middle Ages, Akimov had decided that it was more logical to place the tragedy in the time of Shakespeare himself. Shostakovich, however, did not follow suit, but instead incorporated cabaret genres such as cancan, tango and galop in an uproarious updated-Offenbach style. As Richard Taruskin observes, it was especially the latter genre that was used extensively in Lady Macbeth to dehumanise the characters surrounding the heroine in an attempt by the composer to justify her evil deeds.⁷⁸

• 79 E. Galski, “Muzyka k ‘Gamletu’” [The music for Hamlet], Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 27 May 1932, No. 24.

47In general, apart from drawing on his extensive experience with music for the theatre, Shostakovich’s incidental music to Hamlet provided him with a laboratory in which to try out aspects of his still evolving musical language. Being a young composer, and despite the fame that had to some extent already been thrust upon him, Shostakovich’s musical language at this time was not yet fixed and secure. Contact with ‘big’ personalities in related artistic fields, such as Grigori Kozintsev, Akimov, and not least Meyerhold, was crucial in defining his musical persona (or, it might be said, his multiple personae). At this point in his career it could be argued that his concerns were not so much social criticism as how to place himself as modern, individual and at the cutting-edge of artistic developments. The development of his experiments from the 1932 Hamlet is not only reflected in his later Shakespearean works, and especially Kozintsev’s 1964 film, but also in his symphonies and, more immediately, as we have seen, in his second opera, Lady Macbeth. By composing a self-contained music for Hamlet, which, as one of the critics of the time over-optimistically put it, would “definitely find its way into the symphonic repertoire,”⁷⁹ Shostakovich stuck to his manifesto of not submitting to the instructions of theatre directors. Could we perhaps go further and say that in avoiding compromises and following his inner light, Shostakovich composed music that was simply “too good” for the production, and hence inadvertently exposed the latter’s shortcomings?

• 80 Eleanor Rowe, Hamlet: a Window on Russia, New York, New York University Press, 1976, p. 13.
• 81 Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 200 (...)
• 82 Boika Sokolova, “Between Ideology and Religion: Some Russian Hamlets of the Twentieth Century”, in (...)

50Since its reported disappearance from Russian stages between 1762 and 1809 because of the parallels between the tragedy’s plot and the murder of Peter III leading to the reign of Catherine the Great, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been considered, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia, as a politically charged tragedy.⁸⁰ In this vein, and especially in the Soviet era, productions of this play have often been read and understood as political commentaries. Akimov’s production has raised many such speculations, especially among Western scholars. These theories vary from Simon Morrison’s reading of it as a direct allusion to the power-struggle of the 1920s leading to Stalin’s accession,⁸¹ to Akimov’s supposed efforts to comply with the nascent socialist realist doctrine, as suggested by Boika Sokolova.⁸² However, certainly by comparison with such productions and adaptations of Hamlet as Yuri Lyubimov’s (1970s) and Sergei Slonimsky’s opera (1991), that of Akimov made a relatively passive and generalised political statement on historical and political events, rather than a direct or contemporary one. If anything – again to echo Taruskin’s controversial reading of Lady Macbeth – by concentrating on the positive impact of a hero in something akin to the class struggle, Akimov’s Hamlet could be read as affirming the concept of epochal change as outlined by Marxist dialectics. In a more aesthetic vein, the visual and musical treatment of the subject by Akimov and Shostakovich proved that on the eve of Soviet cultural “Perestroika”, it was still possible to look at Shakespeare through contemporary eyes yet at the same time to stay loyal to the “Bard” – or at least to believe in that possibility.