HOUSE-MUSEUMS IN MOSCOW

The Aksakov Memorial House presents an example of wooden architecture of the end of the 18th century; it is located in a picturesque place of the old part of Ufa city on the bank of the river Belaya. The house is built from Ural larch; the enfilade layout of rooms has survived until nowadays. From 1792 to 1797 the writer’s family lived here. This house of the Aksakovs is known to European reader as “the Family Nest” for the book by Sergey Aksakov “Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson”.

An exposition of the memorial part of the Aksakov Museum,in which an interior of the second half of the 18th century is reconstructed, introduces us the history of Ufa and the Ufa Vicegerency, the family chronicle of the Zubovs-the Aksakovs; shows as an urban setting, family and its life formed the spiritual world of the writer. In literary exposition of the Museum is possible to see different materials, which tell about training period of Sergey Aksakov in Kazan, his theatric and critic activity, about his creativity as a writer in terms of Russian literature of 18th -19th centuries, and his close inner circle. One of sections of the exposition is devoted to professional and personal life of Konstantin and Ivan the Aksakovs, who were the ideologists of Slavophilism. Literary and musical living room presents an interior of the Governor's House of the second half of the 19th century. Documental materials of this hall are connected with the activity of Sergey Aksakov’s son Grigoriy, who was the Governor of the Ufa Province in the middle of the 60s.

The unique setting and atmosphere of this place is the confirmation of that especial status, that it ranks among the other “Aksakov’s places”, which are intimately connected with the name of perfect Russian writer of the 19th century Sergey Aksakov.

The Museum fund amounts 1583 inventory items. Annually the Museum organizes the Aksakovs days, readings, exhibitions, literary and musical evenings, chamber classical and old music concerts, Maslenitsa and Christmas festivals.

The Museum was founded in 1894 by the famous industrialist and art patron Alexey Alexandrovich Bakhrushin (1865–1929) and based on his private collection of theatrical and manuscript memorabilia collected in the end of the 19th century.

 
In 1913, the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences donated the Museum, renowned as the Alexey Bakhrushin Museum of Literature and Theatre, to the city of Moscow. Later on renamed after his founder A. A. Bakhrushin, the Museum was under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences during 1917.

 
Since 1918, the Museum was included into the system of governmental institutions and as a department of the Theatre Society was under the authority of the Narkompos of the RSFSR. The Museum retained the name of its director for life А. А. Bakhrushin and, in 1919, it was renamed and became the A. A. Bakhrushin State Theatre Museum. Since 1941, it has been bearing the present name and is one of the largest storages of documents on the theatre history of Russia, the USSR, and foreign countries. In April, 1997, the Museum was added to the list of the most valuable object of cultural inheritance of the Russian Federation.

 
The manuscript department was established in the Museum in 1935, later it was renamed and became the archive and manuscript department. Theatre programmes and bills, photographs and negatives, audiovisual documents and theatrical scenery items (including set designs, prints and other graphic art objects) are stored in the separate departments.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the prolific and highly regarded Russian dramatist and master of the modern short story, lived in the pink two-story house on Ulitsa Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya with his family between the autumn of 1886 and the spring of 1890.

Born in 1860 into a serf family in Taganrog, Chekhov experienced a difficult and poor childhood. Having gone bankrupt, Chekhov moved to Moscow with the family to make a fresh start. Chekhov joined his family there in 1879 and enrolled in the Medical Faculty of Moscow State University, from which he graduated 5 years later. Having become a practicing doctor, Chekhov supported the rest of his family through free-lance earnings as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. By 1888 he had become widely popular with the lower classes as the author of anecdotes for humorous journals and in the process had turned the short comic sketch of about 1,000 words into a minor art form.

However, Chekhov experimented more and more with serious writing and gradually his works took on a more mature aspect. For the next few years the author concentrated exclusively on short stories, always realist in style, serious in conception but with a hint of underlying humor. Chekhov wrote hundreds of short stories before turning his hand to drama and creating some of Russia's best-loved and most frequently preformed theatrical pieces - "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters" and "The Seagull". The writer also lived and wrote in Melikhovo, south of the capital, and in Yalta, on the Crimean Coast.

The house-museum was perhaps the place of Chekhov's most fruitful artistic period. Not only did the writer balance a working medical practice and a notoriously active social life, but while resident in the house he wrote his first play "Ivanov", 3 one-act farces and over 100 short stories. Visitors have the opportunity to see Chekhov's study and consulting room, his modest bedroom and that of his student brother and the contrastingly ornate family salon. Much of the dining room is now devoted to an exhibition of original playbills and first editions of Chekhov's works. The museum holds regular themed excursions and lectures about the author and his literary works.

Moscow's museum of the great Russian author Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is situated in the a small, pokey house in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor, where his father worked as a physician. Dostoevsky was born in this hospital on the 11th November1821 in a poor but devoutly pious family, whose father constantly aggravated their situation with alcoholism and violence. After the death of his mother in 1837, the young Dostoevsky left the family home and was sent to St. Petersburg to attend the Academy of Military Engineering on the express wishes of his father, a retired military surgeon himself. The future author, who alongside his brother Mikhail had long been fascinated with Romantic and Gothic literature, was entirely unsuited to a military career and on graduating in 1843 he resigned his commission to commence a hazardous career as a writer.

The author finished his first novella "Poor Folk" in 1846 to great acclaim from the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky and the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, who praised him for the work's psychological insight and its ability to play on the reader's heartstrings. Dostoevsky was immediately hailed as the great new talent of Russian literature and went on to produce many more similarly insightful and psychologically probing tales of the country's poorer classes. The writer experienced a volatile and dramatic life, including an 8-month prison sentence after becoming involved in the political discussions of the Petrashevksy Circle in 1848, a mock execution, a 4-year sentence in a Siberian prison camp, acute epilepsy, a compulsion for gambling and numerous unlucky affairs.

Dostoevsky died in January 1881 after a long, tumultuous but much acclaimed literary career. Much of the museum's reconstruction of Dostoevsky's home was based on the writer's own diaries and descriptions of his childhood. Visitors can see the tiny bedroom which he shared with hisbrother and the modest drawing room which was considered so important to the family's social standing that Dostoevsky's parents were prepared to sleep in a narrow bed, jammed between a screen and a washstand. The museum contains a wealth of family portraits, engravings and lithographs of various scenes in Moscow, a charming array of wooden toys and schoolbooks and the family library of classic Russian and European authors. The museum's prize exhibits are without a doubt the parish ledger recording Dostoevsky's birth in 1821, and his quill pen and signature preserved under glass.

The museum is named after Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857). He was the first composer to gain recognition in Russia. His compositions became an important influence on future Russian composers. Born in Novospasskoye, Governate of Smolensk, he went to study in Saint Petersburg, in 1817. Later he traveled to the Caucasus before taking up his work as civil servant, in 1824.

His true profession, however, was that of a composer. During his lifetime, he composed orchestral works, compositions for choir and piano, operas and chamber music. There is a strong national element in all of his works, they sound very Russian. His “Patriotic Song” became the Russian National Hymn, from 1990 to 2001.

In 1857, Mikhail Glinka died while traveling abroad. His body was transferred to Russia and buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Mikhail Glinka made Russian musical culture famous worldwide. He gave Russian music a prominent place in world culture and is therefore often called the “father of Russian music”.

The museum in Moscow carrying his name is a modern building from Soviet times, located in Fadeeva Street no. 4. The first floor shows a vast collection of musical instruments from various parts of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. This is the largest treasure house of musical culture monuments, listed in the national code of highly valued objects of cultural heritage of Russian peoples. About a million items are stored: unique musical instruments, manuscripts, personal property of musicians, books and sheets of music.

The museum was founded in 1943, as the Soviet Government decided to set up a State Central Museum of Musical Culture. In 1954, when the country’s musical circles marked the 150th anniversary of Mikhail Glinka’s birth, it was named after the great Russian composer. Today, the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture is one of the country’s largest museums, an authoritative scientific institution and a major centre of musicology and the history of music.

In the 19th century, musicians and music scholars donated rare muscial instruments, stemming from the vast territory of Russia, all the way from the Caucasus to Yakutia.  For example, a major addition was the famous collection of folk instruments of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, gathered by August Eichhorn. Vladimir Odoyevsky bequeathed a grand piano of a special enharmonic design.

Mikhail Lermontov a Russian writer, poet and painter, sometimes called “the poet of the Caucasus”, is one of the main figures in Russian literature. He has lived in the mansion on Malaya Molchanovka Street from 1829 to 1832, during his studies at the University’s boarding school and Moscow University. Exactly in this small wooden one-storey mansion with mezzanine he began to write poetry and understood that Literature was his mission. This house was rented by Elizabeth Arsenyeva, a grandmother of the poet, from a merchant F.I.Chernova. Along with the house they rented a kitchen, a servants’ house, a stable, a carriage house and a warehouse. After the departure of Mikhail Lermontov and the E.A.Arsenyeva, the construction of the courtyard was remained unchanged until 1844. However, in the following decades, the new owners changed its appearance dramatically. Now the building is restored according to its original plan. With clearance from later buildings, the house is made according to a genuine layout of living – room and mezzanine, typical for mass building of post-fire Moscow.

The only memorial house of Lermontov in Moscow is a priceless artifact and the most significant exhibit. The Museum exposition will tell you about school and academic years of Lermontov in the University Noble boarding school, later in the Moscow Imperial University, and about a tense spiritual and creative life of the poet. By eighteen years he had already created 17 poems, 4 plays, 250 lyrical poems.

 
The memorial part of the house represents a restored interior of the Moscow mansion of the 1830-ies, with pieces of furniture, selected by typology, and decorative arts, genuine family portraits, drawings and paintings of Lermontov, books with his autograph. The Museum exposition will tell you about his family lifestyle, about the interests and hobbies of young Lermontov, and the people around him in those years.

 
The Museum is not only represented the atmosphere of the noble house of the first third of the XIX century, but also conveys the atmosphere of intense spiritual life, which made Lermontov’s poetic genius.

Vsevolod Emiljevich Meyerhold (born in 1874-died in 1940) is a Russian stage director, actor and teacher. He was both a theorist and a practitioner of theatrical grotesque, an author of the programme “Theatrical October” and the founder of the acting school that was then called "biomechanics".

The Meyerhold Apartment Museum boasts all manner of his personal belongings, correspondence, scripts, set designs and photographs. Meyerhold attended the Moscow Philharmonic School of Drama where he studied under the tutelage of the famous Russian playwright, novelist, theatrical producer and cofounder of the Moscow Art Theater Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. In 1898 Meyerhold joined the Moscow Art Theater and began to explore his theories of symbolic and nonrealistic drama. His radical ideas on dramatic theory and production design ensured him a successful if tumultuous career and a reputation as one of the most exciting and experimental Russian theater directors of this century. Although a loyal supporter of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Meyerhold's willfully individualistic temperament and artistic eccentricity drew criticism from Soviet observers and he was accused of neglecting Socialist Realism in his work. He staunchly defended the right of the artist to experiment and refused to submit to constraining Soviet theories of artistic uniformity.

In 1939 Meyerhold was arrested and imprisoned, nothing was known about his death in the West until 1958, when the new edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia claimed he died in 1942, although the year was later changed to 1940.

The Ostrovsky Estate and Museum in Moscow is a part of the Bakhrushin Theater Museums and is dedicated to Alexander Ostrovsky, who is generally known as the representative of the Russian Realist literary era. Alexander Ostrovsky was born in 1823 and became a famous Muscovite playwright. Ostrovsky studied at the Legal Faculty of Moscow State University and then went onto being a court clerk and a civil servant.

Alexander Ostrovsky only began his writing career in 1850, and due to the controversy surrounding his second dramatic work named “The Bankrupt”, he was dismissed as a civil servant. The play focused on the exposure of false bankruptcy claims, and had a profound effect on the Moscow merchant class who were not impressed with the implications his piece brought to light. This did not deter Ostrovsky, and most of his following dramatic work focused on the Russian merchant class. All his works premiered under his supervision at the Moscow Maly Theater, where he had close ties and the Maly Theater honored the playwright with a seated statue outside the theater. In total, Alexander Ostrovsky wrote 47 plays, established the Society of Russian playwrights, and became the artistic director of the Moscow Imperial Theaters. Most of Ostrovsky’s plays are still frequently performed in Moscow today, and are the most widely read works.

The Ostrovsky Estate and Museum is situated in the house where Ostrovsky was born, and was opened on 4 March 1984. The theme that runs throughout the museum is “Moscow in A.N. Ostrovsky’s life and work”. This collection includes the personal items of Alexander Ostrovsky, personal items that belonged to his family and friends, scenic adaptations of some of his plays, consisting of sketches, costumes, photographs, manuscripts and posters, and articles of material that represent the culture and history of Russia. The exhibitions are divided in to the following exhibits: A.N. Ostrovsky’s Memorial House, Moscow in A.N. Ostrovsky’s a life and work, the Thunderstorm on the stages of National Theaters, the Theme of Theater in A.N Ostrovsky’s work, and A.N. Ostrovsky as the public and theatrical figure. The Ostrovsky Estate and Museum is a complete collection of the life of Alexander Ostrovsky and his important role in the Russian theaters and cultural legacy he left behind.

The A.N. Scriabin Memorial Museum is housed in the two story mansion in the Old Arbat section of Moscow where the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin spent the last three years of his life (April 12 to April 1915). It was here that he wrote the musical masterpieces: the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Sonatas, Two Dances “Garlands,” “the Dark Flame” Composition 73 and Five Preludes Composition 74.

The house was a cultural center of Moscow in the early XX century hosting such guests as the music critics Gunst and Sabaneev, the poets Balmont, Ivanov and Baltrushaitis, the writer Zaitsev and theatrical personalities Tairov and Meierhold. S. Bulgakov and N. Berdyaev held philosophical discussions here. In 1922, the home became a State Memorial Museum.

Everything in the Museum is kept as it was in the time of the composer’s life. It contains a color device made be the engineer Moser according to the composers sketches. The device was intended to accompany the “Prometheus” symphonic poem by Scriabin, the first composition to combine both color and sound. The museum also is home to the grand piano made by “Bechstein” especially for A.N. Scriabin. Since the death of the composer the piano has been played by such great pianists as Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Each year the Museum hosts a competition to award scholarships to young musicians. Ten out of seventeen scholarship recipients have already won international competitions. The Museum is also a research and education center. It is open to visitors with tours conducted in Russian and English. Concerts of classical and contemporary music are held here as well as recitals, readings, exhibitions and master classes.

The museum is situated in the grandiose Neo-classical mansion where famous Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavsky spent the last 17 years of his life.

Born in 1863 in Moscow as Konstantin Alekseyev, Stanislavsky performed from an early age in a dramatic group organized by his family, the Alekseyev Circle. Despite his initial awkwardness on stage, the young Stanislavsky worked obsessively on his shortcomings and became completely absorbed with all aspects of acting and theatrical production. In 1885 he adopted the pseudonym Stanislavsky and later established the Society of Art and Literature and later the famous Moscow Art Theater, with co-founder Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

Stanislavsky regarded the theater as an art of social significance, capable of wielding a powerful influence on people and he saw the actor as taking a vital educating role whilst on stage. Throughout the 40 years of his theatrical career, Stanislavsky experimented constantly with acting techniques and psychological theories. He finally formulated the "Stanislavsky Method", which amongst other elements, encouraged actors to become physically and psychologically involved in the emotions of the characters they were playing on stage.

Working with Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavsky staged numerous ground breaking experimental productions at the Moscow Art Theater. One of the theater's greatest successes was a radical re-staging of Chekhov's "The Seagull", which had premiered disastrously the previous year, and whose instant second-time success prompted the famous Russian playwright to produce two further works "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard" especially for the Moscow Art Theater.

The museum, which was opened 50 years after Stanislavsky's death, contains much of the original furniture from his home and is filled with musical memorabilia and exhibitions charting the director's career and the success of the Moscow Art Theater. Visitors can browse around Stanislavsky's study and the many rooms and studios where the great theorist held rehearsals in his later years, when he became too ill to attend the theater. Of particular interest to opera-lovers will be the Onegin Hall, where in 1922 the premiere of Tchaikovsky's opera based on Pushkin's epic poem "Evgeny Onegin" was performed to such great acclaim that the production was immediately moved to the main stage of the theater. The Onegin Hall also hosts regular lectures on the Moscow Art Theater, its dramatizations of works by Chekhov, Gorky, Ostrovsky and Bulgakov and creative profiles of some of the theater's best-known performers.

The Arseny Morozov Mansion is a unique work of architecture of moorish revival style. This amazing building is located in the centre of Moscow, on Vozdvizhenka Street, 16, close to the metro station Arbatskaya. It was built in 1895-1899, according to the plans of architect Victor Mazyrin commissioned by millionaire Arseny Abramovich Morozov. While travelling during the 1890s in Spain and Portugal, Morozov and the architect were impressed by the palace Pena in the Portuguese town of Sintra, a combination of Spanish-Moorish medieval architecture and national style Manueline.

The eccentric young millionaire got the idea to built for himself something similar. He chose for the construction of this unusual house the site offered by his mother on his 25th birthday located right in the heart of Moscow.

Even while the building was still under construction, it was already subject to ridicule and gossip, to rumours and critical articles in different newspapers. The public opinion apprehended the exotic mansion as an expression of extreme eccentricity. In his novel "The Resurrection", Tolstoy allows Prince Nekhlyudov, passing on Volkhonka Street, to describe the building as a stupid unnecessary palace for a stupid useless person.

The design of the main entrance portal and the towers situated on each of its side in particular, best reflects of the moorish revival style. The general composition of the mansion meets modern techniques. The interior decoration reflects the wide dispersion of interests from the owner: from pseudo-Gothic to Empire style, from Arabic to Chinese style interior, it shows an absolute eclecticism.

After the revolution, the mansion housed the theatre "Proletkult" until 1928, then the embassy of different countries, also the editions of British newspapers… Since 1959 the building was home to the House of Friendship Between the People. Today, the mansion is the Reception House of the Russian Government.

The State Museum of Vladimir Mayakovsky was opened in 1974 in the building where the poet lived and worked from 1919 to 1930. The basis of its collection was formed from the stocks of the Library-Museum named after Mayakovsky that had been functioning since 1938.

While Mayakovsky was a prominent representative of avant-guard art, the Museum dedicated to his live and creativity was designed not to the classic museum canons. The building was decorated in postmodern style. Prominent artists, architects and designers of the 20th century used a new method of the organization of the space making a visitor a co-author and participant of the museum action.
In the museum one wouldn't find traditional exhibition halls with glass show-cases and ranged exhibits. The museum space was to remind the Labyrinth of Life, heart of which is the "Boat Room", the poet's memorial room.

The hall devoted to the birth and youth of Mayakovsky recreates the house where the future poet was born and the grammar school Vladimir went to. A hanging giant jug of wine attracts visitors' attention. According to the ancient Georgian traditions (Mayakovsky was born in Georgia) when a child was born the family filled a jug with wine and pitted it. When the child came of age relatives and friends were invited to drink it.

The memorial room of Mayakovsky is situated on the forth floor of the Museum in the former communal flat. The poet who hated petty bourgeoisie culture and way of life couldn't stand useless luxury and had only the most necessary things. The recreated furnishing of modest 20 sq. m. large room where the poet lived for 11 years eloquently witnessed it.

Nowadays the collection of the unique Museum numbers over 50,000 exhibits; notebooks and manuscripts of Mayakovsky, his letters, private belongings, unique things (like the wedding ring of poet's mother and his grandfather's sabre), original furniture, books by and about Mayakovsky and many other worth watching things.

 
The Museum of Vladimir Mayakovsky regularly holds poetical and musical evenings, meeting with writers and actors. On the scene of the Theatre of Poets writers Voznesensky, Evtushenko, Akhmadulina, Iskrenko, singers Dolina, Bachurin, Kochetkov, actors Gaft, Kazakov, Yursky and others performed. The Museum also houses a cinema hall where visitors can see films with Mayakovsky.

Vladimir Vysotsky, the legendary singer-songwriter and actor, died in 1980 and, although his funeral went unannounced, tens of thousands lined the route to the Vagankov Cemetery where he was buried. Although he received little official recognition in his lifetime, his unmistakable gravelly voice, detailing the daily life of the Soviet Union with wit and pathos, was known and loved by millions.

Vysotsky was born in 1938 to a family of servants. In 1960 he graduated from the Studio School of the Moscow Academic Theater, and first achieved fame as an actor on stage and screen. For most of his life he worked at the Theater of Drama and Comedy on Taganka, a short walk from the museum. His most celebrated role was as a denim-clad, guitar playing Hamlet, and he appeared in the play over 300 times.

But it was his songs, tales of the trials and tribulations of the Soviet people, that made him most famous. His work was labeled as Anti-Soviet, but his recordings were distributed on bootleg tapes across the nation, and unadvertised concerts in obscure suburban halls were packed with fans.

The museum contains a wealth of exhibits chronicling his life and the various aspects of his creative activity, including manuscripts, posters and photographs, and bringing to life the whole world of the late Soviet underground.

Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova (born in 1853, died in 1928), an outstanding dramatic actress of Maly Theatre. She created vivid tragic images of Jeanne d'Arc. Maria Stuart, Lady Macbeth, as well as of heroines of works by A.N.Ostrovsky, H.Ibsen and other authors. In 1935 Moscow Drama Theatre was named after M.N. Ermolova.

The museum is located in a private residence of the 18th century where the distinguished tragic actress lived since 1889 till 1928. Since 1970 several rooms have functioned as a memorial museum opened in 1986 where visitors can find Ermolova`s personal belongings saved by her daughter M.N. Zelenina.

The House-Museum displays the cultural and daily way of life in the end of the 19th century till the beginning of the 20th century. The visitors get to know the life of their favourite Moscow actress and the atmosphere of the era. Previous guests of this house were the Russian intellectual circle of the 19th century: Stanislavsky, Shaliapin, Serov, Chekhov, Bakhrushin, Sadovsky.