Ah, St. Petersburg! Life at its Best, Really!
7 April, 2002 - May, 2002

The exhibition opened on 7 April, 2002, in the Hermitage Theater Foyer is the first part of the Inspector General at the Hermitage Project. The project is prepared by the State Hermitage Museum jointly with the State Theater and Music Museum and other museums and theaters of St. Petersburg. The Inspector General is one of the most accurate representations of Russian life. It was premiered with the imperial authorization on 19 April, 1836, at the Aleksandrinsky Theater. The Emperor Nicholas I and the play's author were among the audience. The play was premiered at the Maly Theater in Moscow the same year. The full unabridged text of the play was for the first time presented at the Aleksandrinsky Theater in 1870. Konstantin S. Stanislavsky staged the Inspector General for the first time in 1908. Mikhail Chekhov's play as Khlestakov in the 1921 version by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater was exemplary. The famous 1926 version of Vsevolod Meierhold was the continuation of Chekhov's Khlestakov. This was the most radical performance of the play in the theater history. After the early 1930s, particular actors (Igor Ilyinsky, Yury Tolubeyev, Igor Gorbachev) rather than particular stage versions are remembered. In 1972 Georgy Tovstonogov staged a performance which he considered paramount for his theater. Each new stage version of the comedy in its own way met the requirements of its epoch. Nikolay V. Gogol's comedy is a masterpiece of wit and the exhibition creators decided to avoid the strict canon of serious exhibitions dealing with history and arts and to present a vivid, ironic performance. The exhibition and play are two parts of one project. The exhibition "Ah, St. Petersburg! Life at its Best, Really!" tells about the phenomenon of this masterpiece of comedy, the history of its creation, Russian stage versions and the play's role in the public life of St. Petersburg and Russia. Alongside authentic things from Gogol's time, props from various stage versions of the Inspector General are showed. The State Hermitage Museum loaned mostly things contemporary with the play's author, objects of applied art, furniture, arms, clothes and fans.
The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to the first night of the brilliant comedy. Alongside fragments of the play's manuscript and portraits of the first performers, the Hermitage shows drawings of the first audience, Nicholas I and all members of the Cabinet who were ordered by the Emperor to attend the performance.
The Inspector General at the Hermitage Project is an interesting reconstruction of the one and a half centuries' history of Nikolay V. Gogol's play.

Costumes for the Inspector General
Z. Zinchenko
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Objects from the 1830-1840s when the Inspector General was staged for the first time at the Aleksandrinsky Theater
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Puppet of Mikhail A. Chekhov as Khlestakov
1921
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Costumes of the Governor for the Inspector General
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