Petrushka: Sources and Contexts by Andrew WachtelReview by: Catriona KellyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 332-333Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212853 .

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332 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

biological determinism. Hence her admiration for individuals who strove to free themselves from the circle such as the 'sexless' Robespierre. The tragedy of such individuals, and her own tragedy, rests on the fact that the vicious circle is stronger.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies URSULA PHILLIPS University of London

Wachtel, Andrew (ed.). Petrushka. Sources and Contexts. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, I 998. ix + I 69 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Notes. Index. $35.00.

THIS handsomely produced and well-written collection of essays might, in a sense, be described as an exceptionally detailed and scholarly set of programme notes to Benois, Stravinskii and Fokine's ballet Petrushka (this spelling is preferred here to Petrouchka, traditional in the West). Experts on Russian music, dance, literature and theatre discuss the genesis of each collaborator's contribution to the piece, providing both historical contextualiz- ation and, in some cases, meticulous close analysis of formal features. Tim Scholl persuasively suggested that Fokine's choreography was less radical than has sometimes been argued by superficial commentators on the ballet, demonstrating Fokine's affinities with his predecessors, such as Gorskii and Petipa. Janet Kennedy outlines the importance of Benois's contact with Russian fairground, and also his ballet's relation to theatrical tradition in terms of its handling of stage space. In an abundantly illustrated essay, parts of which will be of considerable interest to specialists in popular culture as well as to experts in and amateurs of Russian music, Richard Taruskin discusses Stravinskii's use of popular songs in his score and gives a technical analysis of the work's 'musical modernism'. And the editor has supplied two excellent introductory pieces dealing with Petrushka's place in Symbolist and post-Symbolist literary and theatrical tradition, and with its relationship to the broader context of popular culture and literary history. He has also reconstructed a detailed libretto from the directions given in the score and from descriptions in published memoirs. A substantial bibliography is given, and well-chosen and well-reproduced illustrations, several in colour, add to the appeal of the book.

All round, this is a substantial and satisfying treatment of one of the main works in the balletic repertoire. An additional desideratum, to be sure might have been a discussion of Konstantin Miklashevskii's oddly neglected historical study of the commedia dell'arte (I 9 I 4), which is of fundamental importance to an understanding of Symbolist and post-Symbolist views of the topic. It might also have been useful to have had more information about Petr Potemkin's playlet Petrushka, performed at the Lukomor'e cabaret in I 908; the peformance is discussed in Benois's memoirs, reviews of it appeared (for example, in Zolotoe runo), and a copy of the text might have been tracked down among the censorship copies of dramas available in the St Petersburg Theatrical Library. And, without wishing to encourage the contributors to plunge too deep into the muddy waters of psychobiography, I would have liked to see some attempt

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REVIEWS 333

to address the almost pathological fascination which the subject matter of Petrushka had for Benois. The set and costume designs dominated his career to a far greater extent than Stravinsky or Fokine's contribution dominated theirs, and in revivals of the ballet Benois reproduced his earlier sketches with unwavering and eerie accuracy. Part of the reason for Petrushka's hold on his fancy was surely the fascination with childhood about which Andrew Wachtel has written elsewhere, and which was perhaps more important in achieving the 'dazzling combination of realism and fantasy' to which Janet Kennedy points than was 'the experience of collaborative work' which she identifies as the crucial difference between this project and others upon which Benois was engaged. But these are very minor objections to a collection that is itself the fruitful result of collaborative work in the best sense.

The importance of Petruslka in terms of music, dance and theatre history makes it an obvious choice for a 'sources and contexts' study of this kind. One of the most popular ballets created by the Ballets russes, it is firmly ensconced in the international repertoire, yet also fuses many of the central interests of its time and place. The piece is, as ballets go, remarkably well-balanced, in that the score and sets were of at least equal merit to the libretto (something that could not be said of, say, Giselle, whose score is as simple-minded as its scenario is seductive). At the same time, there are other ballets and indeed operas that cry out for similar treatment: Musorgskii's Boris Godunov, The Rite of Spring, Les Noces, The Love of Three Oranges and Lady Macbeth ofMtsensk are all examples that come to mind. There is no indication that Northwestern University Press, the brave publisher of the book, envisages a series, but one hopes that Petrushka. Sources and Contexts gets the healthy general readership that it deserves, and paves the way for other case-studies of this kind.

New College CATRIONA KELLY University of Oxford

Wachtel, Andrew Baruch (ed.). Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature and Society. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. North- western University Press, Evanston, IL, I998. xvi + 30I pp. Notes. Illustrations. $59.95.

INTERDISCIPLINARY studies involving Russian music are still not a common phenomenon, despite the excellent work of scholars like Caryl Emerson and Richard Taruskin. Andrew Wachtel's stimulating and well illustrated collec- tion of articles, many by young scholars, goes some way to redressing this situation.

The book opens with a short introduction by the editor, in which he observes the significance of music in Russian life. Noting, however, that Russian opera composers usually chose libretti based on Russian literature, he curiously acknowledges in a footnote that other European composers frequently did the same for 'songs or song cycles' (p. xvi), apparently overlooking such an egregious operatic example as Bizet's Carnen. Such aberrations are not, however, typical of either the introduction or the book as a whole.

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