Lahda, the Russian Musical Dramatic Art Society
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LAHDA, the Russian Musical Dramatic Art Society, was a group formed in London in 1919 by director Theodore Komisarjevsky, tenor Vladimir Rosing, and dancer Laurent Novikoff. The purpose of the organization was to “bring closer friendship and understanding” between England and Russia “by means of art and its beauty of expression.”[1] LAHDA also hoped to create needed work for the many talented but struggling Russian artists and performers who had been arriving in London as stateless refugees since the Russian Revolution.[2]
The members of LAHDA represented a distinguished cross-section of modern Russian artistic culture. Komisarjevsky had emerged from Konstantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre. Novikoff had trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School and had been a dancer with companies belonging to Sergei Diaghilev and Anna Pavlova. Rosing was a well-known recording artist and recitalist of Russian art songs. Other participants included Diaghilev dancers Tamara Karsavina and Lydia Sokolova. LAHDA's governing Art Council included the Russian-born English conductor Albert Coates and the mystical Russian artist Nicholas Roerich.
In addition to performing, the members of the group offered training to young artists wishing to study in the modern methods of Russian artistic expression. In discussing the formation of LAHDA, the Manchester Guardian wrote, “Russian art has much to give us, not only of chiefly because it expresses in unique and passionate form the character of a great nation, but still more because it has in it the quality of the universal. The Russians love art because it is art. They care so passionately for its form because they know how to value its soul.” [3]
LAHDA’s first performance was at Prince’s Galleries in London on December 19, 1919. As with most LAHDA events, the eclectic evening included Russian music, drama, dance, and even comical elements reminiscent of La Chauve-Souris.[4]
Performances followed over the next few months at Wigmore Hall[5] Aeolian Hall, and a then full season at the Duke of York’s Theatre, which included the premiere of Poldowski’s opera “Silence”.[6]
In June 1920, LAHDA staged a Komisarjevsky production of Maeterlinck’s “Sister Beatrice” at Aeolian Hall.[7]
By the end 1920, LAHDA had rebranded itself as the Russian Association of Representatives of Art and Literature with a headquarters at the Russian Embassy.[8]
The organization then presented four evenings of Russian Artists ‘At Home’ at Prince’s Galleries in April and May 1921 which featured dance, Komisarkevsky’s Theatre of the Eager Centipede, performances by pianist Alexander Siloti, the Russian Balalaika Orchestra, and even restaurant offerings of popular Russian dishes.[9]
Finally, in June 1921 Komisarjevsky and Rosing staged a season of ‘’Opera Intime’’ at Aeolian Hall with conductor Adrian Boult, and featured Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades along with three other works.[10]
References
- ^ Letter and Enclosure from Vladimir Rosing to James Louis Garvin, December 1919. James Louis Garvin Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
- ^ "Exiled Russian Art", The Living Age, Vol. 309, 1921
- ^ “Russian and the British Drama”, Manchester Guardian, January 14, 1920. pg. 5.
- ^ “Russian Dramatic Art”, The Globe, December 15, 1919.
- ^ “A Russian Programme”, The Stage, January 22, 1920.
- ^ ”Ballet at the Duke of York’s”, London Times, March 10, 1920.
- ^ Performance Program dated June 4-5, 1920. Theodore Komisarjevsky Papers, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library.
- ^ "Exiled Russian Art", The Living Age, Vol. 309, 1921
- ^ Performance Program dated May 8, 1921. Theodore Komisarjevsky Papers, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library.
- ^ Scholes, Percy. “Intimate Opera”, The Observer, June 26, 1921.