Ivan Vsevolozhsky

Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky (Russian Иван Александрович Всеволожской, also Vsevolozhsky Ivan, Ivan Vsevolozhsky; * April 2, 1835; † November 10, 1909 ) was a Russian theater director, librettist, costume and set designer in the Mariinsky Theatre and later director of the Hermitage.

Life

Vsevolozhsky belonged to the nobility in St. Petersburg. He was married to Ekaterina Dmitrievna Wolkonski, a granddaughter of Field Marshal Pyotr Mikhailovich Wolkonski. Vsevolozhsky was an official and diplomat in the Russian Empire and in 1881 director of the State Theatre in St. Petersburg. In 1886 he moved the Imperial Opera and the Imperial Ballet from the dilapidated building of the Bolshoi Theatre Kamenny in the house of the Mariinsky Theatre. Under his leadership, the Office of the ballet composer, occupied until then, musicians like Léon Minkus and Cesare Pugni, who thus largely about the ballet production certain abandoned. The Ballettimpressario Marius Petipa thereby received greater freedom and Vsevolozhsky could hire outsiders composers. So Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, he had The Sorceress (1887 ) and The Queen of Spades, which was first performed in 1890 under the direction of Eduard Nápravník at the Mariinsky entrusted with the composition of operas.

Vsevolozhsky himself designed for a number of ballets, the scenery and the costumes. In 1889 he wrote the libretto commissioned by the Ballet Sleeping Beauty, which was premiered in 1890. In 1892 Vsevolozhsky Petipa and Lev Ivanov in charge of the choreography for the ballet The Nutcracker, which together with the opera Iolanta, also by Tchaikovsky, was first performed on 18 December 1892. 1894 and 1895 saw Vsevolozhsky for a later authoritative Neuchoreographie of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet by Petipa and Ivanov with the dancers Pierina Legnani and Paul Gerdt. Still in 1898, he contributed to the equipment of the premiere of the ballet Raymonda with music Alexander Glazunov.

Under his leadership, the ballet remained in his expressions of courtly culture of absolutism arrested and encapsulated from social developments from conscious, meanwhile in Russian society, the political and cultural conflicts with concepts such as nationalism, Realism and symbolism were performed.

1899 ended Vsevolozhsky theater work and took over the management of the Hermitage Museum, a position he held until his death.

• Selection of pictures from Wsewoloschskis stage work

Costumes in Sleeping Beauty ( 1890)

Costume design for The Nutcracker (1892 )

Stage in the Nutcracker (1892 )

Stage in the Nutcracker (1892 )

Costume design for The Nutcracker (1892 )

Pierina Legnani in Swan Lake ( 1895)

Stage in Raymonda ( 1898)

Pierina Legnani in Raymonda ( 1898)