Ravenskikh, Boris Ivanovich

Early years

Boris Ravenskikh was born in St. Petersburg in the family of the choral singer Ivan Vasilievich and Alexandra Epifailovna Rovensky ^[4] . He was the youngest, fifth child. According to official figures, he was born in 1914, but many sources, including the director’s letters, personal files and the date on the gravestone, indicate 1912 ^{[5] [6] [7] [8] [9]} . There was also no certainty with his surname (“by the way, he was Rivne, and Rivne, and Raven, and Rivne” ^[10] ), however, he gained the greatest fame as Ravensky.

After the Civil War, the father moved the family to his small homeland in the village of Yushkovo, Kursk province . There was no school in the village, so Boris studied at the seven-year secondary school in Stary Oskol , which he graduated in 1929. As an actor, he participated in the performances of a youth choir organized by his father, but he did not want to play, but to help other actors and put on the plays himself. In his certificate of graduation, it was written: "During his time at school, he found a special penchant for dramatic art" ^{[4] [11]} .

In the late 1920s he returned to Leningrad ^[12] . On the third attempt, he entered the College of Performing Arts at the acting department, but due to a lack of general education he was sent to ancillary courses ^[4] . There, under the leadership of Mikhail Sokolsky, he worked in the Leningrad Theater of Working Youth (subsequently, the director often used the experience of Sokolsky in his performances) ^[13] . Two years later, he received a recommendation for the directing department, where he worked in the workshop of Leningrad students and associates of Vsevolod Meyerhold - Nikolai Petrov and Vladimir Solovyov , which he graduated in 1935 ^{[4] [14]} .

Theater Work

In 1934, six months before graduation, Meyerhold himself, after watching student work, said, pointing to the Ravenskys: "I will take this guy with me." In the same year, he already staged The Queen of Spades at the Maly Opera House (MALEGOT) as an assistant director, and in 1935 he was enrolled in the troupe of the State Theater named after Vs. Meyerhold , where he served until its closure in January 1938 ^{[4] [14]} .

In 1938, he carried out his first independent production - “ Galina ” by Isidor Shtok in the Moscow “Modern Theater”. In 1939, after the arrest of Meyerhold, checks began on people from his circle. In winter, Erast Garin came to the Ravenskys and took him out of the city, hiding in a forest near Moscow by his friend forester, where they lived until the summer of 1940 ^[9] .

In 1940-1941, having enlisted the patronage of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , he studied at the Moscow Art Theater , then served as the director of the Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Studio until 1950 ^{[9] [13]} . As a student of Meyerhold, in his productions he affirmed the dominant position of music in a drama performance.

In 1949, he staged the performance “A Wedding with a Dowry ” at the Moscow Theater of Satire based on the play of the same name by Nikolai Dyakonov , who became one of the first Soviet musicals. The performance went on stage with an unchanged full house, was played 152 times and in 1953 filmed on film .

In 1951-1960, Ravenskikh served as the director of the Maly Theater . His most significant work of that period was The Power of Darkness (1956), in which he abandoned the traditional interpretation of the play, setting it “as a high tragedy, sought to reveal the light principle in the soul of a Russian person ... sharpened his characters, brought into play a tense dynamism, widely used music, light ” ^[1] . Member of the CPSU since 1954 .

The play “ Girl's Heart Clouded ” (1959) based on the play by Victor Kurochkin , staged at the Malaya Bronnaya Theater , was not accepted by critics, but the director achieved his goal in it: he introduced the person’s inner spiritual state through music ^[3] .

From 1960 to 1970 he served as the chief director of the A.S. Pushkin Moscow Drama Theater , creating a number of works significant for his time ^{[5] [14]} .

In 1970, he took the post of chief director of the Maly Theater, where he brought with him his like-minded actors - Alexei Loktev , Vladimir Safronov , Valery Nosik ^[5] . The most significant work of this period is “ Tsar Fedor Ioannovich ” (premiered on May 29, 1973), which has not left the stage for 30 years and has survived more than 800 performances ^{[5] [15]} . In 1976 he left his post, continuing his work as a stage director.

The director did not like conversational theater. He believed that “the modern theater is clearly not enough of the effect that occurs at a symphony concert when music unites both listeners and performers in one impulse”, and always wanted to achieve “musicality like a concerto of sound” on stage ^[4] . He said in particular:

“... Music in every performance is very important to me. If they ask who I would entrust to tell about myself, I will say music. When the overture of Sviridov to “ Tsar Fedor ” sounds, I know that it has everything that I wanted to say with my performance. Music is the most democratic of the arts. This is what enters into each of us, makes it clear, accessible from one person to another, it is the harmony or disharmony of the connections that make up the structure of human society. Music is not only the music itself, that is, the sounds of the melody, that which is perceived by the ear. Chekhov's "The Seagull " - music. I dream of making a performance without a single musical chord, which nonetheless would be musical ... "

- Boris Ivanovich Ravenskikh ^[4]

In 1978, he left the Maly Theater and came to the Bolshoi Theater to realize his long-held dream of merging musical and dramatic principles. In the same year he staged the opera The Snow Maiden ^[5] .

He taught at GITIS , professor of the drama directing department (1977) ^{[4] [14]} . Among his students are Valery Belyakovich , Yuri Ioffe , Nadezhda Arakcheeva.

Death

In early January 1980, he received permission to create his own theater, in which he planned to gather his students ^[14] .

But the director’s dream was not destined to come true: on January 10, 1980, Boris Ravenskikh died ^[5] . This happened suddenly: he ran up the stairs in his porch and fell, clutching his heart. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow (plot No. 9) ^[16] .

Family

• Father - Ivan Vasilievich Rovensky ^[4] , was born in the village of Yushkovo, Kursk province . He sang well in childhood, from the age of ten he was a singer in the choir of the Belgorod monastery . A few years later, the auditor, who came to the monastery from St. Petersburg with a check, took him to sing with him in the choir of the Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Lavra . When he developed a baritone , he received an invitation to the Mariinsky Theater Choir, where he sang next to Fedor Chaliapin . At the same time he served in the choir of the Eliseevskaya Church on Bolshaya Okhta , where he met his future wife, the mother of his five children. During the Civil War he sang in the choir of the Red Army ^{[4] [11]} .
• Mother - Alexandra Epifailovna Rovnoyskih (Solovyov’s girlhood) ^[4] , of graph origin (during the Soviet era, Boris Ivanovich tried not to advertise this fact and indicated that his mother was from a bourgeois-bureaucratic family), a graduate of the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens . She knew French, read a lot. She died during the siege of Leningrad ^[11] .
• First wife -
• The second wife is Lilia Olimpievna Gritsenko (1917-1989), actress, People's Artist of the RSFSR (1957), sister of the actor Nikolai Gritsenko (1912-1979). There were no children in the marriage. Later, Lilia left her husband and went to the actor Alexander Shvorin ^[11] .
• The third wife is Galina Aleksandrovna Kiryushina (1934-1994), actress, People's Artist of the RSFSR (1974). The couple lived on Bolshaya Bronnaya Street and were together until the death of Boris Ivanovich ^{[11] [17]} .
  • Daughter (older) - Alexandra Borisovna Ravenskikh (born 1959), actress, director. Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (2013) ^{[11] [12] [18]} .
  • Son-in-law: Dmitry Mironovich Polonsky (born 1958), theater and film actor, son of documentary filmmaker Dmitry Polonsky (1923-1997) ^[11] .
    • Grandson - Dmitry Dmitrievich Polonsky (born 1990), a professional racing driver and an extreme driving coach. In 2014, he won the first season of the television reality show " Racers " and was awarded a trip to Germany on the Nurburgring track ^[11] . Then Oleg Keselman invited him to his team ^{[19] [20] [21]} .
  • Daughter (younger) - Galina Borisovna Ravenskikh ^[11] .
    • Granddaughter - Alina.

• 1953 - Wedding with a dowry (shared with Tatyana Lukashevich )
• 1961 - Ivan Rybakov (with Elena Skachko)
• 1971 - Days of our life (shared with Olga Wiklandt , Galina Kholopova)
• 1971 - Virgin Soil Upturned (with Valery Gorbatsevich)
• 1973 - The very last day (shared with Vitaly Ivanov )
• 1974 - Birds of our youth (production director)
• 1978 - The Power of Darkness (shared with Felix Glyamshin)
• 1979 - Return to square one (with Maya Markova)
• 1979 - Russian people (shared with Maya Markova)
• 1981 - Tsar Fedor Ioannovich

• Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1957) ^[14]
• People's Artist of the RSFSR (1963)
• People's Artist of the USSR (1968)
• Stalin Prize of the Third Degree (1951) - for staging the performance “A Wedding with a Dowry ” based on the play of the same name by N. M. Dyakonov on the stage of the Moscow Theater of Satire
• State Prize of the RSFSR named after K. S. Stanislavsky (1967) - for staging the play “Virgin Soil Upturned” based on the novel of the same name by M. A. Sholokhov in the Theater named after A.S. Pushkin
• USSR State Prize (1972) - for staging the play “Dramatic Song” based on the novel “ How Steel Was Tempered ” by N. A. Ostrovsky
• Order of Lenin (1974)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• 1 order
• Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
• Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow”

• 2008 - documentary film “Dramatic song. Boris Ravenskikh ”(Russia, 2008, production of the TV channel“ Russia-Culture ”, directed by K. Orozaliev) about Boris Ivanovich Ravenskikh, whose name is associated with a significant period in the history of Russian theater ^[22] .
• 2012 - the book “Director Boris Ravensky” by Alexandra Borisovna Ravensky, the daughter of the director, released on the anniversary of his birth (a collection of articles, memoirs, speeches by the director and fifty of his contemporaries) ^[23] .
• 2016 - The Starooskolsky Theater for Children and Youth was named after Boris Ravensky ^[24] .