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ABSTRACT
Quite often, when one evokes the main contributions of the Stanislavsky System, the “method of physical actions” immediately comes to mind. Voice training remains a little-explored area and is often seen as the last step of Stanislavsky’s work in his opera-dramatic studio. The aim of my essay is to show, on the contrary, that voice training was an early preoccupation for Stanislavsky, who places his search for a natural voice in the wake of a Russian tradition born at the dawn of the 19th century. At the beginning of his career, Stanislavsky was primarily concerned with restoring all the nuances and possibilities that the voice has in life, even if this meant breaking with the codes of decency and with theatrical conventions. The voice is treated like a noise in the sound score and like a mood indicator devoid of clichés and based on the nuances of intonation. Then, as he fine-tunes his System, Stanislavsky develops the sound capacities of the voice and details the laws of speech that he has his students work on relentlessly. The combination of singing and acting training in his latest studio is the logical culmination of a research that has always combined work on the voice with work on the body. In the 1930s, the training by “études” leaves the actor free to find the right intonation, the right strength of voice by himself, because rigorous daily training has given him the tools to use them with as much ease as a singer in front of his score.
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Notes
1. Knebel, L’Analyse-Action, 217.
2. Until 2022, in Pontedera (Italy), the Grotowski disciples, Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini, had members of their community work on vibratory singing.
3. Dodine, De la parole aux chants, 103–4.
4. M. Ščepkin to P. Annenkov, 20/02/1854, in Mixail Semenovič Ščepkin, 229.
5. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 318.
6. Rehearsal of 16/29 April 1909, in Senelick, Gordon Craig’s Moscow Hamlet, 67. See also: Vinogradskaja, Žizn’ i tvorčestvo K.S. Stanislavskogo, t. 2, 183.
7. With the advent of phonographs, gramophones, telephones, and radios at the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Russian artists perceived the bodiless voices as distorted and artificial. Chekhov hated gramophones because they speak and sing without feeling anything: “Through them, everything is caricatural, dead,” he used to say. Cited by Bulgakova, Golos kak kul’turnyj fenomen, 166.
8. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 236.
9. Stanislavski, Building a Character, 85.
10. Stanislavskij, Iz zapisnyx knižek, t. 1, 157.
11. Stanislavskij, Režisserskij ekzampljar, t. 4, 407.
12. Stanislavskij, Režisserskij ekzampljar, t. 3, 93, 223.
13. Stanislavski, Building a Character, 88.
14. Stanislavskij, Sobranie sočinenij v 9-ti tomax, t. 3, 61.
15. Chekhov, On the technique of Acting, 75. In Russian, Chekhov gives other examples. See: Čexov, “Psixologičeskij žest,” 203–4.
16. Chekhov, On the Technique of Acting, 76.
17. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 297.
18. Volkonskij, Vyrazytel’noe slovo, 1913.
19. Stanislavskij, Sobranie sočinenij, t. 4, 45 (emphasis mine, the text exists in Russian only. It is not translated in Creating A Role).
20. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 318.
21. Stanislavsky took singing lessons for an hour a day from his friend, the tenor Fiodor Komissarzhevski, a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory and the father of the famous actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya.
22. Quoted by Novickaja, Uroki vdoxnovenija, 123.
23. Stanislavski, Building a Character, 145.
24. Ibid., 231.
25. Ibid., 219.
26. Stanislavskij, “O muzykal’nosti reči,” in Rabota aktera nad soboj, t. 3, (1955 edition), 322.
27. Knebel, L’Analyse-Action, 123–4.
28. Knebel,’ Slovo v tvorčestve aktera, 16 (emphasis by M. Knebel).
29. Ibid., 134.
30. Vinogradskaja, Stanislavskij repetiruet, 507.
31. Shevtsova, “Music, singing, word, action,” 6.
32. Stanislavski, Building a Character, 83.
33. Ibid., 96.
34. In 1926, Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Comic Opera and Stanislavsky’s Opera Theatre became state theatres and were given the building of the former mansion of the Saltykov counts at 17 Bolshaya Dmitrovka, where they took turns performing. Stanislavsky’s stagings were traditional: Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades by P. Tchaikovsky, La Bohème by G. Puccini, Carmen by Bizet, Boris Godounov by M. Mussorgsky, The Tsar’s Bride and May Night by N. Rimsky-Korsakov, The Barber of Seville by G. Rossini, Rigoletto by Verdi. On the other hand, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko was tempted by innovation: he experimented with operetta: La Fille de Madame Angot by C. Lecoq, La Pericole and La Belle Hélène by Offenbach, Les Cloches de Corneville by Robert Planquette. He also wrote interpretations of classical operas and dramatic works such as R. Gliere’s Lisistrata, based on the play by Aristophanes, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Carmencita et le soldat, a free interpretation of Carmen.
35. The studio, located on Gorki Street, remained active until 1948. The Elektroteatr Stanislavsky, directed by Boris Yukhananov, now stands on this place.
36. Kristi, “Vozvraščenie k Stanislavskomu,” 582. See also: Kristi, Rabota Stanislavskogo v opernom teatre, 210.
37. Stanislavskij, in Večernjaja Moskva, 16/12/1932. Quoted by Kristi, Rabota Stanislavskogo v opernom teatre, 258.
38. Kristi, Rabota Stanislavskogo v opernom teatre, 266
39. Ibid., 256, 262.
40. Ibid., 220.
41. Ibid., 229.
42. Autant-Mathieu, Le Système de Stanislavski, 159–72.
43. Stanislavskij, Iz zapisnyx knižek, t. 2, 258. Kristi, Rabota Stanislavskogo v opernom teatre, 257.
44. The cantilena is an element of musical art borrowed and introduced into the system as a metaphor for the fluidity of song, speech, movement, actions, thoughts and emotions. Roumiantsev in Kalašnikov, Stanislavskij – reformator opernogo iskusstva, 57–8. See also Kristi, Rabota Stanislavskogo v opernom teatre, 245.
45. The book, translated by E. Hapgood, was first published in 1949. In the Russian edition, Moskva-Leningrad, Iskusstvo, 1948, only 3 chapters are devoted to this question.
46. For performances of A Month in Country (1909), and rehearsals of Hamlet (1911) and of The Village of Stepanchikovo (1916).
47. Besedy K.S. Stanislavskogo v studii Bolchogo teatra v 1918–1922, 164.
48. Autant-Mathieu, “Stanislavsky and French Theatre: Selected Affinities,” 80.
49. Dodine, “La jeunesse et les chants,” 103–4.
50. Issaeva, Gody stranstvij Vassil’eva Anatolija, ebook, chapter “The water turns into wine.”
51. Pavis, Dictionnaire de la performance et du théâtre contemporain, 176–7.
52. Roumiantsev, 1926–1937. In Kalašnikov, Stanislavski – reformator opernogo iskustva, 57–8.
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Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu
Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu is an emeritus research director at CNRS. She is a member of the Eur’ORBEM unit (Cultures and Societies of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East) under the tutelage of the Sorbonne Université-CNRS. A theatre historian and specialist in Russian and Soviet theatre, her work focuses on the Moscow Art Theatre and its studios, theories of acting, the transcultural nature of acting and the question of the exile of theatre artists, and Russian dramatic writing (M. Bulgakov, A. Vampilov, emerging authors at the end of the USSR). She has written several books on Stanislavsky, his students, and the tours of the Moscow Art Theatre. These include Le Théâtre d’Art de Moscou. Ramifications, voyages (ed.), Paris, CNRS Editions, 2005; Stanislavski. La Ligne des actions physiques, Montpellier, L’Entretemps, 2007; Mikhaïl Tchekhov/Michael Chekhov. De Moscow à Hollywood. Du théâtre au cinéma (ed.) Montpellier, L’Entretemps, 2009; The Routledge Companion to Michael Chekhov, co-ed. with Yana Meerzon, London/New York, Routledge, 2015; K. Stanislavski, Correspondance, Paris, Eur’ORBEM éditions, 2018; Le Système de Stanislavski. Genèse, histoire et interprétations d’une pratique du jeu de l’acteur, Paris, Eur’ORBEM, 2022. A complete list of her publications can be found on her website: www.autant-mathieu.fr.