by Coryne Hall
Sunday arrived. The Imperial box remained empty and the company was disillusioned, knowing that the Tsar would not come when Kschessinska was dancing. The Director of the Imperial Theatres, Ivan Vsevolozsky, who was obliged to be in whichever theatre the Tsar and Tsarina attended, had gone to the Michaelovsky Theatre to welcome the Imperial party. Suddenly, moments before the curtain was due to rise, there was a commotion as the Tsar arrived unexpectedly. Someone telephoned Vsevolozsky, who hurried over from the Michaelovsky Theatre to greet the sovereign, and the ballet began in a fever of excitement. Again Mathilde was triumphant, blaming the episode on intrigues by her enemies in the theatre.
On 9 February 1897 Mathilde danced in a revival of the ballet Le Roi Candaule, based on the story of Gyges, King of Lydia. She had first danced this work in 1893 but now completely eclipsed the Moscow ballerina Nelidov, who was dancing the chief role of Queen Nisia.
The season ended with a gala in honour of the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria in which Mathilde danced Aurora. ‘At 8pm we went to the gala performance of The Sleeping Beauty,’ the Tsar wrote in his diary. ‘They showed two acts. Wonderful!’4
At Strelna during the summer of 1897 the bicycling craze arrived and Mathilde soon became adept. She had been given a cycling skirt by Sophie, Countess de Torby (a granddaughter of Pushkin), the morganatic wife of Sergei’s brother Grand Duke Michael Michaelovich. Michael had been banished from Russia by Alexander III for marrying beneath his station and Sophie had vowed never to set foot in Russia again, so presumably Mathilde had met her on the Riviera.
Mathilde liked to cycle along the St Petersburg highway via Mikhailovskoe (the estate of Sergei’s father), and Znamenka (the property of Sergei’s uncle Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich senior). Just beyond Znamenka was the Alexandria Park, the north-eastern part of the Peterhof estate where the Tsar usually spent most of the summer staying at the Villa Alexandria with his family. Mathilde’s route was obviously chosen in the hope of meeting him. She often met Sergei’s older brother George, with whom she formed a close friendship, or his father who insisted she execute figures of eight on her bicycle, a feat she was not always able to perform successfully.
One day Sergei brought a message that the Tsar and Tsarina would be driving past Strelna and that Mathilde must without fail be in her garden. Mathilde chose a bench from where she could easily be seen. As they drove slowly past she stood up and made a deep curtsey, receiving ‘an affectionate response’. This reassured Mathilde that Nicholas had obviously told his wife about their earlier affair and not concealed anything (how could he, after those letters?). He was now, she thought, tactfully showing his thoughtfulness and concern.5 Mathilde drew enormous consolation from this, but what the Empress felt can only be imagined.
Sergei had the forest near the dacha thickly planted with mushrooms. Every morning they wandered through the woods piling their baskets high, then returned to Strelna where the mushrooms were cooked in butter and cream, cut up into small pieces and served Russian style. Yet nothing the devoted Sergei could do would change the fact that Mathilde was still in love with the Tsar. She had Sergei’s ‘protection’, she had the use of his vast wealth, he showered her with jewels – but she certainly did not love him.
That summer Mathilde appeared in three gala performances. On 23 July she danced Coppelia at the Peterhof Theatre for the King of Siam; and in August, accompanied by the opera chorus, danced the polonaise and mazurka from Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar before President Fauré of France.
The most brilliant gala was given on 28 July in honour of the Empress’s cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II. This was an open-air performance of the ballet Peleus. Mathilde danced on a specially built stage on Olga Island, an artificial island on the upper lake at Peterhof. The distinguished guests, in uniforms and evening dresses, reached the island in boats. The hills formed a natural backdrop and the whole scene glowed like something from a fairytale under electric lights. ‘A more wonderful setting … could hardly be imagined,’ wrote one of the dancers.6 Mathilde positioned herself on a little island decorated as a grotto, not far from the stage. As the music began the grotto opened and Mathilde stepped on to a mirror which then glided towards the stage. The effect was as if she was walking on the water.
Shortly afterwards Mathilde received an invitation from the Kaiser to dance in Berlin. It was politely declined. In her memoirs Mathilde explained that she preferred to live in her own house rather than endure long absences from Russia by touring abroad. Germany was also the Empress’s country, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Mathilde opened the autumn season at the Maryinsky on 10 September with The Sleeping Beauty. Then Legnani fell seriously ill and Kschessinska had to carry the full repertoire until almost the end of the year. This included Paquita, Mlada and La Fille mal Gardée. A new ballet, Ivanov’s The Mikado’s Daughter was also given its première but was not a success.
Felix Kschessinsky, ‘the King of the Mazurka’, celebrated sixty years on the Warsaw and St Petersburg stage in 1898, still an acclaimed dancer. A benefit performance was given at the Maryinsky on 8 February. After the mazurka, in which he was partnered by Mathilde, the ovation was so great that they had to give an encore. Then, with the curtain raised, there were presentations from the ballet, opera and drama companies. Meanwhile cases of presents were passed up from the orchestra pit, including a chest of silver items so heavy it needed several people to lift it. The Tsar was present in the Imperial box. ‘They showed three different ballets and the old man Kschessinsky’s benefit performance.… He danced several mazurkas himself. The performance was splendid,’ Nicholas wrote in his diary.7 There was no comment about Mathilde.
She took advantage of Lent to spend two weeks travelling in Italy with her godmother Mme Paule-Marie, a seasoned, although Mathilde thought rather eccentric, traveller who always travelled by night in order not to lose any daylight for sightseeing. Mathilde loved the country, which she called ‘my beloved Italy’, and returned to it time after time for short holidays.8
She went via Warsaw, another place of which she was particularly fond, spending the evening there and catching the night train to Czenstokow. Her arrival at 4 o’clock in the morning was timed to coincide with the daily ceremony of raising the curtain in front of the statue of the Holy Virgin of Czenstokow, which took place with great solemnity accompanied by organ music. This miraculous image was venerated all over Poland. Mathilde went straight from the church to the hotel, where to her surprise, the room was full of flowers from admirers.
Mathilde was always more than happy to dance at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw. During the summer of 1898 she performed there with Kyasht and Bekeffi, receiving an enthusiastic reception from the public and the critics. After rehearsals she organised daily lunches for her many friends in the theatre and Warsaw society. One of these was a handsome young Pole who she claimed wanted to marry her. When she left he was at the station to see her off.
Mathilde did not dance at Krasnoe Selo that season. On her return from Poland she retired to Strelna to rest. Her only stage appearance was on 18 July at a gala performance of The Pearl in honour of King Carol of Roumania, again on Olga Island. This time Mathilde danced the leading role of the White Pearl.
At Strelna the visitors included three of her dearest friends, Prince Dimitri Orbeliani (‘Mitia’), Boris Gartmann and Prince Nikita Troubetzkoy. All were pages in the Imperial Household and were commissioned as officers that August – Nikita in the Nijegorodsky Dragoons, Mitia in the Pskov Dragoons and Boris in the Horse Guards. Nikita and Mitia, after celebrating in town, continued the celebrations at Strelna with Mathilde. After a late night they awoke next morning to drink, not tea, but pink champagne, thoughtfully sent to their room by the hostess so that they could continue the party. Mathilde remained at the dacha until early autumn, only returning to the capital to dance The Sleeping Beauty on 20 September.
In January 1898 Legnani had scored her last real triumph in the première of R
aymonda. Mathilde renewed the challenge that autumn when Petipa revived for her Pharaoh’s Daughter, based on a novel by Gautier. This four-act ballet is, as its name suggests, set in Egypt. It tells of an English lord and his servant who shelter from a storm inside a pyramid. They smoke opium and fall asleep. The lord is visited by the Pharaoh’s daughter Aspicia, risen from her sarcophagus. The English lord becomes Taor, an Egyptian who woos Aspicia, and they elope. At the end of the ballet, after many difficulties, the Pharaoh forgives the couple and allows them to marry. At this point the English lord wakes and realises it was only a dream.
This became one of the best ballets in Mathilde’s repertoire, probably her favourite after La Fille mal Gardée and she only reluctantly allowed others to dance it. Mathilde ‘shone with the greatest brilliance’ in this ballet, wrote Boris Muraviev in Le Journal de Genève.9 Her talent, said the Soviet ballet historian Vera Krasovskaya, was to combine the model of classical dance with the inspiration of dramatic experiences. Her interpretation became the standard for this role.
At the première on 21 October 1898 the role of Aspicia’s aged fiancé the King of Nubia was mimed by Felix Kschessinsky, who that year was created a Merited Artist of the Imperial Theatres. Mathilde was every inch the star, described variously as wearing a dress by Paquin, diamonds from Paris jewellers and, in another scene, an elegant tunic, her arms and neck glittering with Fabergé ornaments. Even in the scene where she supposedly emerged from the depths of the Nile Mathilde wore a magnificent new costume. Although one reviewer called it absurd, the public loved Kschessinska and admired her sparkling technique. Mathilde introduced her ‘magnificent virtuoso variation’ from this ballet into nearly every work she performed.10
Mathilde has been criticised for wearing her jewels on stage but in this she was not alone. Others also followed this trend. Once there was a frantic search when Pavlova’s jewels went missing in her Copenhagen hotel. They were discovered in a laundry basket. In 1895 the Petersburg Gazette criticised Kschessinska for dancing the beggar woman in Paquita wearing diamond earrings and a sumptuous pearl ring. ‘Begging for alms – and suddenly in diamonds! Absurd!’ Mathilde realised that the public wanted to see a star and she was determined to look like one. On stage she often wore ‘the Tsar’s necklace’ of walnut-sized diamonds and it appears in many of her photographs.
Mathilde always wore a wig on stage, saying that it was easier to fix jewellery into and it always looked wonderful. Her appearance was invariable. Whether she was an Egyptian princess, gypsy or beggar woman her wig was curled in the latest fashion by the renowned St Petersburg hairdresser Delacroix and she was tightly corseted, the garments specially made in a St Petersburg corset shop. Mathilde, like some of the other great ballerinas of her era (for instance Preobrajenska and, later, Karsavina) danced in soft Italian pointe shoes. The Russian pointe shoes grew stiffer as other dancers found they needed more support.
The Kschessinsky dynasty was at its peak and balletomanes avidly tried to obtain tickets for performances in which all four members – father, son and two daughters – took part. Joseph often partnered his more famous sister, occasionally even dancing with her at private parties. Once they performed an Apache dance with Alexander Orlov. Joseph was a born teacher and taught at the Theatre School, where his pupils included Anna Pavlova and Lydia Kyasht.
At the end of this season Ivan Vsevolozsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres since 1881, retired and became Director of the Hermitage, ‘his retirement… precipitated by his disagreements with his new superior… Baron V.B. Frederiks.’11 He was succeeded in the Imperial Theatres by 39-year-old Prince Sergei Volkonsky, a member of one of Russia’s greatest families. The prince was inexperienced in theatre administration, having come from private life, and only accepted the post to please his father.
One of his first actions was to engage another Assistant for Special Affairs. This decision was to change the course of Russian ballet for ever. His chosen candidate was Sergei Diaghilev.
Diaghilev and Kschessinska were the same age. Sergei Diaghilev was born in the province of Novgorod on 17 March 1872. His mother died in childbirth and two years later his father, a colonel of the Imperial Guard, married a lady from a distinguished musical family. When Sergei was ten years old they moved to one of his family estates near Perm. Although Diaghilev later studied law in St Petersburg to please his family, his main interest was in the arts and he enrolled at the Conservatoire in 1890. Always elegantly dressed, fluent in French and German, he travelled around Europe looking the epitome of a Russian nobleman abroad. He bought fine furniture, collected works of art and, on returning home, began to organise art exhibitions. It was in 1899, while editing and publishing his ground-breaking magazine The World of Art with his friends Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst and Walter Nouvel that Diaghilev met Prince Sergei Volkonsky, who contributed some articles.
When Volkonsky became Director of the Imperial Theatres and appointed Diaghilev to his staff in 1899 he asked him to edit The Imperial Theatres Annual. This rather dull publication, giving details of the performances at all the Imperial Theatres, was turned by Diaghilev into a luxurious journal. He thought he was made for life and began to make up to Mathilde, seeing her home after performances, knowing she had powerful friends at court. Through Mathilde he met Grand Duke Sergei Michaelovich. Mathilde mistook Diaghilev’s intentions and tried out her charms. ‘Curiously, I have always been successful with men in whom I expected least of all to awake admiration!’ she wrote, in a reference to Diaghilev’s well-known homosexuality. In fact, although she pursued him (even turning up unexpectedly and sitting beside him at the theatre), Mathilde could not penetrate Diaghilev’s ‘elegant but cold amiability’.12
The company nicknamed him ‘Chinchilla’, because of the lock of grey at the front of his dark hair. When he entered his box while Mathilde was dancing, the company sang very quietly:
I’ve just heard
That ‘Chinchilla’ is in his box,
And I’m terribly afraid
To make a mistake!13
After her variation Mathilde always bowed to him at the footlights. ‘Her liking for Diaghilev was exceedingly obvious, and astonished no-one,’ said Serge Lifar.14 Mathilde always had an eye for a handsome man. Diaghilev was probably her only failure. Perhaps this was at the root of their later problems.
At about this time Mathilde became attracted to Nicolai Skalon, a handsome young Hussar officer. It was common knowledge in St Petersburg that his name was linked with a certain Countess but, nevertheless, Mathilde determined to use all her wiles in order to captivate him.
Like many Guards regiments the Hussars had a subscription box at the Maryinsky in the fashionable bel étage. Nicolai Skalon soon began attending all Mathilde’s performances, arriving early so that he did not miss a moment when she was on stage. At the end of the season he visited her at Strelna. When she left for Krasnitzy he was at the station to see her off, and was there again on her return to St Petersburg. He gave her a pretty little watch surrounded by diamonds, for use as a buttonhole. Mathilde said that everybody loved him, although she omitted to say what Grand Duke Sergei thought of her new admirer.
In the event it did not matter. Skalon became ill with progressive paralysis and was admitted to a clinic, where he died. At the funeral Mathilde placed a small bouquet of violets on his coffin. Later she received a touching letter from his brother.
In the autumn of 1899 the Italian ballerina Henrietta Grimaldi was making a guest appearance at the Maryinsky. Mathilde was in her box watching Coppelia when, at the end of the first act, Grimaldi sprained her ankle. Mathilde was asked to take the ballerina’s place so that the performance could continue. This she did, with apparent success, despite the fact that Coppelia had been removed from her repertoire a year earlier. The administration of the Imperial Theatres duly expressed thanks to Kschessinska for kindly agreeing to take over at such short notice.
Mathilde was therefore amazed and angry to learn shortly
afterwards that Prince Volkonsky was giving La Fille mal Gardée to Grimaldi. Traditionally the ballets in a dancer’s repertoire could not be given to anyone else without her consent. When Mathilde heard the news she said: ‘On no account! That is my ballet.’ Yet Grimaldi was, after all, only a guest artist appearing for one season. Courtesy should have dictated that she be allowed this role – but Mathilde was due to dance it in the autumn and doubtless did not want any comparisons to be made between her and Grimaldi.15
Mathilde went to see Volkonsky and, she said, asked him ‘politely and with deference’ to reconsider. According to Volkonsky, Mathilde ‘declared that she had the sole right’ to La Fille mal Gardée and asked him not to give ‘her ballet’ to Grimaldi. Volkonsky refused, pointing out both the conditions of the contract and the fact that there was no monopoly of roles in the Imperial Theatres. Mathilde refused to budge and ‘left very discontented’.16
The next morning Volkonsky received a telephone call from Grand Duke Sergei Michaelovich, who wanted to arrange a meeting. In the Grand Duke’s presence Volkonsky went through all the points again, including also the question of discipline and duty of service. Sergei was adamant that the matter be considered ‘not with official dryness, but with humanity and heart’.17
Volkonsky then put the reasons for his refusal in writing. In reply he received an incoherent letter from Sergei, which ended: ‘You write that you answer me after mature deliberation. I, too, did not address myself to you without it. By wronging Matilda Felixovna [sic] you insult me.’ Rehearsals continued.18
Volkonsky’s predecessor had warned him about Mathilde. Even before the post of Director had been offered to him, one of his friends was asked whether Volkonsky was skilled enough to prevent the Grand Dukes interfering in questions connected with the theatre. For ‘Grand Dukes’ read Kschessinska. The hapless Volkonsky was about to get a taste of her power.
