Conrad Blog:

who is meyerhold?

Vselolod Emilyevich Meherhold (1874-1940), director and actor, theorist of the avant garde theater, a friend and patron of Shostakovich. In 1928 Shostakovich was responsible for the music in the Theater of Meyerhold and later he wrote the music for the premiere of Mayakovsky's comedy The Bedbug. (Subsequently Shostakovich invariably refused Meyerhold's proposals of collaboration.) Not only were Meyerhold's productions extremely popular, but his name was known throughout the Soviet Union and among leftist circles of the Western intelligentsia. Despite that fact, Meyerhold disappeared without a trace in the years of the "great terror." In the fifteen years that followed, if Meyerhold was written about at all, it was usually in this vein: "All the work of Meyerhold, ringleader of formalism in the theater, is a betrayal of Russia's great culture and a groveling before the bougeois unprincipled art of the West." During the "thaw," Shostakovich was one of the first to work toward Meyerhold's "rehabilitation."

Thank you, Solomon Volkov. Kate, if you do not know about accusations of formalism in the Soviet Union, you should read up on it.