Cherkasov, Nicolai: Notes of a Soviet Actor, University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, 2004, “Reprinted from the original edition,” no date given and translation uncredited. Cherkasov is best known to us for his impressive work in the leading roles of two cornerstone films of Russian cinema, Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and Grigori Kozintzev’s Don Quixote. He made many other movies, some with patriotic themes, but also returned to the stage throughout his long career, which, as he notes “started in the early years of Soviet rule, after the October Revolution had thrown the gates of the theatre wide open to the masses.” Cherkasov chronicles those fraught years from the p.o.v. of an aspiring actor (at first, a comic eccentric), and takes us through the entire Soviet time up to his death in 1966. His comments on acting for both film and stage, and on his own roles, with Stanislavski a strong early influence, are, as we’d expect, penetrating. Like Stanislavski, Cherkasov first dreamed of a career in opera, and his first artistic hero was Chaliapin.  He recounts an early assignment as an extra in Boris Godunov at the Mariinsky, one in the first pair of boyars immediately behind Chaliapin in the Coronation Scene procession. His marching partner: Yevgeni Mvravinsky, later the master conductor of the U.S.S.R.’s greatest orchestra, the Leningrad Philharmonic.

Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1963: Konstantin Stanislavsky, 1863-1963, compiled by Sergei Melik-Zakharov, Shoel Bogatyev, and Nikolai Solntsev; Vic Schneierson, trans. In effect, an extremely impressive centennial Festschrift. It’s divided into three sections—Man and Actor, Stanislavsky and the World Theatre, and Stanislavski’s Letters, with notes and a bibliography. A staggering array of Russian and international figures pay tribute, and while some are brief notes of congratulatory boilerplate, others are more substantive and perceptive. None sounds coerced. Reading the final entry, a 1938 letter of thanks for 75th birthday wishes to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Mikhail Kalinin; contemplating the photo of KS cordially shaking hands with Kalinin on the presentation of one of several orders bestowed on KS by the Soviets; and thinking back to the 1880s and ’90s in the context of the developments of the late 1930s, I cannot but wonder what talented and devoted a student of The System it would take to parse the mixture of memory, genuine gratitude and pride, and obligation lies behind the effusive words of the writer, a man of stubborn independence and integrity. The one shown in the picture, I guess.

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NEXT TIME: Offenbach’s weird, wonderful Les Contes d’Hoffmann is returning to the Met’s repertory this season, after a long layoff. Not a new production, but to the best of my awareness, a new cast top to bottom under Marco Armiliato, directed by Bartlett Sher, and with who knows what’s in and what’s out in terms of edition. I’ll be seeing it October 1, so in view of my promise to myself to make up lost vacation time in the lovely Berkshires fall, I’m going to set Oct. 25 as publication date.

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