The development of theatre and scenery art in Russia from the middle of the 19th century till the art theater foundation

Abstract

In this article the author examines the main stylistic trends of theatre scenery in the second part of the 19th century. It is also noted that the scenery is gradually relegated to a kind of supporting art not having any significant artistic value in the performance. The author outlines the features of the development of scenery art in each decade beginning from the middle of the 19th century. She clearly tells about the substitution of theatre-scenery art for the scenography in its up-to-date meaning. In one part of this work the author analyzes scenery of some drama performances in the imperial theaters. The tremendous vitality and progressiveness of the Wanderers (“peredvizhniks”), the fruitfulness of their artistic method, was reflected in the fact that it was the Wanderer (“peredvizhnik”) Simov who was thefirst to introduce the Stanislavsky system into theatre-scenery art. Obviously, the experience of previous years provided the basis for the further developmentof theatre scenery art as a whole. That particularly enabled the Moscow Art Theatre founders to rethink a lot and introduce new ideas.