[Thanks to Project Music Cataloger Christina Linklater for contributing this post]
Several sets of Russian postcards on ballet and operatic themes were recently added to the John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection. These tiny cards, numbering 217 in all, were produced between 1905 and 1982. Their subjects are specific performers (a set of 18 devoted exclusively to the bass Feodor Shaliapin, for instance) as well as theatres (particularly Moscow’s Bolshoi) and productions.
Most of the cards contain only Russian prose and were thus presumably marketed to domestic enthusiasts. As text almost entirely covers the reverse surfaces of the cards, the cards would not have appropriate for mailing. Rather, they were intended as souvenirs, not only of a particular performance but also of the theatres and performers themselves. Particularly delectable is this set of portraits showing Elena Katulskaya as the Snow Maiden in Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera of the same name and Alexander Pirogov as the Miller in Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s opera The Mermaid. Although Katulskaya and Pirogov died in 1966 and 1964 respectively, these photographs are copyrighted 1975, suggesting that beloved singers enjoyed popularity even after death.
Here, a still from a 1976 production of the ballet Spartacus by the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian features the dancer Vladimir Vasiliev, who won the Lenin Prize for the role.
Finally, a few sets of postcards depict only venues. A charming collection simply titled Bol’shoǐ Teatr Soiuza SSR (Bolshoi Theatre USSR) juxtaposes the theatre’s formal grandeur with the everyday life surrounding it: an audience waits for the red curtain to go up, empty chairs sit in a deserted hallway, casually dressed pedestrians loiter outside the theatre.
