Mikhail Lermontov’s poetic drama is a merciless truth about a cruel world where morality walks on a knife’s edge. But Vakhtangov’s Masquerade is also a celebration — enchanting music, vivid costumes, mysterious masks that intrigue, slander, and joke while remaining unrecognized. Masquerade is freedom from everyone and from oneself.
Masquerade is a theatre of characters, intrigues, flirtation, passionate confessions, and dangerous revelations. Fools, cynics, hoaxers, clowns, actors, and romantic heroes pass by in succession, «unaware of shame,» protected by their anonymity. Here, they kill with words, with gossip, and then, taking off their masks, shed «bitter tears of compassion.»
What a captivating and treacherous community! A thoughtlessly started intrigue grows with details and speculation and rolls like a snowball onto the victim and the seducer.
A masquerade is a run around in a circle without stopping, without a break; its swift whirlwind draws you in, its bravura joy gives you courage and sometimes deprives you of your senses.
A masquerade is a dream whose meaning is revealed with the last chord of the waltz.
«Masquerade» is a tragic farce, a melancholic Commedia dell’arte, set in our time and swirling to the sounds of Aram Khachaturian’s waltz, which returned to the Vakhtangov stage decades after it was written — the stage for which it was originally composed.
