Anatoli Vassiliev joined the GITIS Schools in Moscow in 1968 to become a stage director.His first plays were staged in very difficult conditions in Soviet Russia, but in 1987, during perestroika, the managers of his theatre, The School of Dramatic Art, opened its doors to a landmark show, Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello.
With a view to developing his teaching courses in line with the tradition of the great Russian masters, he gave preference to workshops, laboratories, which did not prevent him from working abroad, especially in France, at the Comédie-Française where he discovered in Valérie Dréville, his ideal actress.
In 2001, with the help of two architects, he constructed a new theatre building, a huge edifice in the centre of Moscow, shaped like a sort of white ship, full of light, with interlocking and transparent spaces inside. He continues there with his experimental work and his teaching research on intonation in order to go beyond the two traditional, exclamatory and narrative, forms, developing instead an ‘affirmative' form which contains the verticality of meaning, the connection between sound, breath and excellence. As demanding about physical movement as he is about voice work, and always in relation to music, Vassiliev tries to provide the most complete kind of training in presenting his oeuvre which is constantly re-worked.
Plato, Homer, Pushkin, Pirandello, Molière, Chekhov and Heiner Müller among others, are magnified, which often gives the spectator the feeling that they are discovering these writers for the first time.
Since 2004, Anatoli Vassiliev has also been advisor on training courses in stage-direction at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre, ENSATT, in Lyons, France.
At the Avignon Festival, Anatoli Vassiliev presented Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1988, Amphitryon and Les Lamentations de Jérémie in 1997 as well at Médée-Matériau in 2002.
From 1830, the great Russian poet, Pushkin composed four ‘little tragedies'. These four dramatic studies included Mozart and Salieri in 231 verses to tell the tale of this ultimate encounter between the two musician-composers which gave rise to a suspicion that Mozart was killed by Salieri, an idea that has been taken up and developed by others in various dramatic works to the extent that it has almost become the accepted truth.
Begun in 2000, Anatoli Vassiliev's work on this text is constantly revised in his theatre-laboratory in Moscow and is recreated with each series of performances.
Seeking to give voice to Pushkin, Anatoli Vassiliev works, as always with his actors, to uncover, not only the specific sound of this work, but also, through plastic improvisation, the most appropriate physical presence for each person on stage. Framed by the Carrière de Boulbon (the Boulbon Quarry), the lights which cut through the playing area as well as through the bodies of the actors, renders this adventure in theatre all the more fascinating.
Initially, we are drawn into the heart of the tragedy itself, in the funeral song of the poet who is about to die, before being plunged into the music of Vladimir Martynov's Requiem, staged and choreographed for sixty artists. Mozart's laughter cuts across the stage space which becomes the place of the words, of poems, the scene of the crime.
Never, it seems, has anyone gone so far in fulfilling a wish to be enter the heart of lyrical words so that they resound and dazzle, giving those who listen to them the impression that they have never really heard them before. JFP
Distribution
mise en scène : Anatoli Vassiliev
requiem ,musique de : Vladimir Martynov
avec : Igor Yatsko, Grigory Glady Interludes dramatiques Nikolai Tchindiaykin, A. Ogarev, O. Malakhov, K. Grebenchikov, O. Laptiy, V. Yuchenko ° Chef du chœur et des musiciens Tatiana Grindenko
ensemble de cordes « Opus posth » : Tatiana Grindenko premier violon, A. Ivanenko, L. Yegorova, E. Polouyantchenko, V. Metelev, N. Panasiuk, N. Kotcherguine, I. Solokhin scénographie : Igor Popov, Anatoli Vassiliev
chorégraphie : Efva Lilja
chœur des anges : S. Anistratova (chef de chœur), E. Amirbekian, I. Baigoulova, S. Barannikov, E. Berdnikova, A. Boukatina, A. Goussarova, O. Elisseev, O. Ermakova, A. Kouzmenko, D. Poletaeva, E. Serebrinskaya, A. Chlevis, A. Yachenko
piano : N. Nikolskaya
pédagogue : I. Yatsko
pédagogue danse : V. Yuchenko
costumes : V. Andreev
lumières : I. Danitchev
son : A. Zatchessov
Production
Production : Théâtre « École d'Art dramatique » (Moscou)
Remerciements : au Centre culturel français de Moscou