About project 

Laser interactive 3D tour

 Entrance hall

This is the only area where there is no music; only the sounds of a tuning orchestra reach out from afar. Improvised rigging ropes have become an architectural solution for the foyer area, and the visitors, while walking through, come into contact with these ropes. There are two very important meanings behind this technique. The first is to show the backstage of the theatre, where the rigging ropes are part of the mechanism that changes the scenery during the performance. The second one is of no less importance: a visitor, passing through the entrance hall, sets in motion the ropes, hanging from the ceiling to the floor, and creates with their body an imitation of a sound wave, just like a sinusoid on an oscilloscope screen, thereby blending the statics of the sculpture with the dynamics of the opera.

While walking along the central axis of the entrance hall, a viewer finds themselves in one of the sacred places of any theatre - an artists’ dressing room. This is a wholly mirrored space where sculptures are placed as if real actors were waiting to enter the stage. It is in this room where the visitor becomes part of the theatrical troupe, hearing the sound of the opera "Don Giovanni", which they join after passing the dressing room and "entering the stage".

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Don Giovanni/dressing rooms

The geometry of the space, where the action of Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” takes place, is built with a reference to the theatre of the 17th-18th century, the time when an inclined stage, and not an auditorium, was common. To implement this, we have modified the floor geometry. This room is the first place where the visitor unwittingly becomes an actor, enlivening the static sculptures. On the floor, there appear the geometric symbols (crosses, brackets, squares). This is not only a reminder of the need to keep social distance but is also a place that is primarily intended for visitors of the exhibition to be transformed into “actors”.

Eugene Onegin

Passing through the soundproof buffer space that separates the theatres, the visitor finds themselves on the stage where Tchaikovsky’s opera “Eugene Onegin” is being played. In the centre of the space, there is a rotating circle which is divided by a wall into two acts of the opera. On one side, the Ball in the Larins' house is exhibited, whereas on the other side Gremin's Ball may be seen. The sounds of the acts are brought together by a pause, allowing the viewer to move from one scene filled with drama to the final act of the opera.

An important architectural and conceptual technique was the creation of a direct, as well as an indirect, sense of visitor’s integration into the action of the mezzanine, designated to create a feeling of engagement in the immersive action. 

The arrangement of the exhibition lighting was done in such a way as to create a playing of shadows, both of the sculptures and people passing in front of them. It was unequivocally light and shadows that became one of the main links between opera and sculpture. To implement this, we divided the hall, where the operas "Eugene Onegin" and "The Tales of Hoffmann" take place, with a wall of translucent matte material on the inside, placing the sculptures at a great distance from each other, while creating the logistics of the movement of visitors in such a way that when they pass the sculptures, a dynamic silhouette of the sculpture would be created by a passerby’s shadow.

The Tales of Hoffmann

The opera “The Tales of Hoffmann” by Jacques Offenbach is located on the site of one of the staircases that connect the two floors of the exhibition hall. The design was created in a way that would use the rhythm of the stairs and create a reference to chamber theatres that were formed on the principle of a multi-tiered space similar to the Hermitage Theatre in St. Petersburg. We increased the square of the stairs with a multi-tiered podium, creating an amphitheatre, and placed sculptures corresponding to the first act of the opera, “Olympia”. On the steps of the amphitheatre, there are places where visitors can stand or sit, thereby becoming part of the mise-en-scène. 

To implement the semantic basis of the exhibition as reflected by the title itself, “Russian Classical Sculpture from Shubin to Matveev”, the sculptures are arranged not only in association with the characters of the opera parts but also following a clear temporal and cultural path between Shubin and Matveev. That is why we have limited the movement of the stairs using this exhibition space to guide visitors through the two side galleries that lead to the start of the exhibition and the two central staircases.

The Flying Dutchman

There are three mise-en-scènes in two side galleries. The left/east gallery welcomes visitors with Wagner's opera “The Flying Dutchman”. The sculptures that are located in this section represent the bow decorations of sunken ships that have been kept in the Naval Museum. The inclination and rotation of the panels, as well as the arrangement of the exhibition lighting, are made in such a way that the falling shadows cross on the floor, creating an allusion to naval battles. After any battle, that a priori claims human lives, there comes a period of reflection and repentance.

St. Matthew Passion

Further, having completed the inspection of the hall, the visitor enters the space/theatre where the actions of Bach's oratorio "St. Matthew Passion" unfold. The architectural solution was to create an image of a Lutheran church, for which Bach created these works. To accomplish this, we created a rhythmic sequence of planes consisting of arched niches, where sculptures were placed on pedestals; this became a kind of contrast between the aggressive technique of using protruding acute-angled consoles in Wagner's opera and the image of minimalist Lutheran churches in Bach's oratorio.

A Life for the Tsar

The right/western gallery is dedicated to the opera “A Life for the Tsar”, written by M.I. Glinka in 1836. This opera was dedicated to the troubled times in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. As the architectural compositional solution, the lighting was adjusted in such a way that the shadows falling from the sculptures would create new meanings and images for the mise-en-scènes of the opera. It is also worth recalling that conspiratorial, schismatic moods, in other words, sedition, undoubtedly changed the history of Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. To create an appropriate image of plotting and integrate the visitors of the exhibition into the process, additional lighting was installed, oriented in such a way that the falling shadows from the visitors would be located as if behind each of the mise-en-scènes of the opera and would be exaggeratedly larger in scale than the shadows of the sculptures.

Going up​​​​​​​

Going up to the second floor, the visitors find themselves in the backstage space of the theatre. The general compositional structure is built following the principle of city streets. The buildings that form the streets of the city are replaced with fabrics that refer directly to the offstage and scenery of the theatre. There is a riddle hidden for visitors in the geometry of the streets - this is a real walking route between the two imperial theatres of St. Petersburg: Alexandrinsky and Mikhailovsky. Both of these theatres served as a prototype for closed concrete cubes where the operas “Norma” by Vincenzo Bellini and “Salome” by Richard Strauss are demonstrated.

Norma

The room, a theatre space where the action of "Norma" takes place, is dedicated to the dramatic finale of Act 2 of the opera - "The Temple of Irminsul". Spectators enter the hall through a narrow portal, to the right of which there is an inscription in a stencil font - “entrance to the stage”. The scale and proportions of the portal are a reference to the "wings"(where the scenery is stored) through which the performers enter the stage. 

When entering the theatrical stage, the visitor becomes a part of the battle action of the uprising, composed of bronze sculptural compositions of cavalry battles, which, in their turn, are located on two large-scale concrete pedestals crossing the room and being offset from each other. The entire action is accompanied by dynamic lighting and sound.

Salome

On the opposite side, the visitor is being awaited by a scene from Richard Strauss's opera "Salome" - "Dance of the Seven Veils". The room is a rectangular space made of concrete. The floor level was raised by 1,5 meters in order to create not only an impromptu stage but also an orchestra pit. Having climbed the ramp, the visitor enters the stage and turns into an unwitting participant in the dance of Salome. On the stage, seven full-height female sculptures are arranged radially, characterised by the dynamic plasticity of the body. Behind the pageant wagon, an "orchestra pit" is located. The philosophy behind this technique is the allusion to emptiness and the tragedy of the mise-en-scène: sculptures, chaotically arranged details, somewhere-fallen music stands, simple but perfectly proportioned stools by Alvaro Aalto - Stool 60, either randomly arranged or complexly stacked in each other, all of these creates a psychological feeling of fleeing from the outcome of the action’s finale - the tragedy of the episode within the secret decisions of Salome, everyone is bound to decide for themselves.

Chamber scenes 

The space between two theatres and streets is made of white fabric. The canvases fill the entire space of the second floor, creating a rhythmic repetition of the image of the theatrical backstage. The geometry of the canvases facing the main street creates the chamber scenes where the following operas unfold: "Manon Lescaut" by Giacomo Puccini, "Aida" by Giuseppe Verdi, "Faust" by Charles Gounod, "Mermaid" by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, "Don Quixote" by Jules Massenet, "Jenůfa" by Leoš Janáček. The philosophy of such a presentation is a short episode of dialogue when the viewer is assigned the role of a moderator of the conversation.

Methodology

It is also important to mention what one of the most important technical methods of implementing the concept of the exhibition was. In all closed spaces imitating the halls of opera houses, the architectural solution of the arrangement of sculptures corresponding to the acts of operas is a dynamic sound and light system that makes each sculpture have its own sound “beam” directed to it. This technique creates a feeling that the sound comes from the sculpture, just as if it were an opera singer. As the visitor approaches the sculpture, the sound intensifies, and it decreases when the visitor moves away. This complex task was accomplished without the use of multitrack, but solely with the help of digital conversion.

In regards to the work of the curators of the project, a large-scale scientific study, which lasted more than two years, was carried out, whose purpose has been to show the viewer the rare (and particularly significant for Russian art) sculptural works of the second half of the 18th - early 20th centuries.

Heritage

Visiting the exhibition, the spectators will be able to see over 150 unique sculpture works selected from the collections of the State Russian Museum, the State Hermitage Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Museum of Urban Sculpture, the “Tsarskoye Selo” State Museum-Reserve, the Peterhof State Museum-Reserve, the “Gatchina” State Museum-Reserve, the Pavlovsk State Museum-Reserve ”, the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the State Museum and Nature Reserve “Tsaritsyno”, Peter the Great Central Naval Museum, the Scientific-research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, the State Museum of the History of Religion, and many others.

The exposition includes not only recognised masterpieces but also works that had hardly ever been exhibited before. And owing to this exhibition, these works will get integrated into the history of Russian sculpture.

The wall

What unified all members of the team was their sacred, sensitive, and reverential attitude towards the central figures in the exhibition – the statues.  The inspiration that enveloped each and every one of the participants in the count on me project like magic was the key to making this complex inter-museum project a reality.

Backstage 

Onstage

FIN

Architectural Workshop Circul ltd