Petrouchka

Since then Diaghilev's production of Petrouchka has become distinctly worn and shabby--which is not surprising, seeing how many years it has been in the repertoire. The ballet has lost its charm for me and I feel sad when I go to see it, for des ans l'irreparable outrage seems to have told on everything. Many items have disappeared entirely, as, for instance, the merry-go-round on which children used to have rides and the windmills whose multi-coloured, crossed sails waved in the air. The gingerbread and sweetmeat stalls are gone too and the outside steps leading into the huge balagan, where the people crowded together, waiting for admittance to the performance. The small table with its enormous steaming samovar where tea was sold is hardly noticeable nowadays. All these things were there in 1911 and they gladdened my eyes, for I had tried to reproduce the picture of our St. Petersburg Butter Week Fair in full detail.

But I was still more grieved by the disorder which in the later productions, reigned on the stage. For the original production every figure had been individually thought out by me. I used to watch carefully during the rehearsals to see that every walker-on fulfilled the part that had been given him. The mixture of various characteristic elements gave the illusion of life. The "people of good society" showed elegant manners, the military men looked like real soldiers and officers of the time of Nicolas I, street-hawkers seemed really to be offering their goods, the peasant men and women looked like real mouzhiks and babas. I allowed nobody to "improvise" or over-act. Later these instructions were forgotten and improvisation and dilettantism reigned on the stage. People walked about aimlessly from corner to corner, without knowing who they were and what they were to do, trying to cover their "emptiness" by affected gesticulation. I was particularly irritated by the "drunks." In the original production I had insisted that only three tipsy fellows--one of them playing an accordion--should from time to time become noticeable against the background of the more or less "decent and orderly" crowed. Nowadays everybody seems to be drunk and the impression is quite false, for although people did drink in Russia, still, the street had its own rules and regulations, its own conception of good behaviour and decency, and it is only thus that the digression from these rules could seem amusing and typical.

Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet by Alexandre Benois. 1941. Page 335-6..