Stage design for Ballet Imperial (Hunter College Playhouse, New York, 1941)
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky established his career as a stage and costume designer in Saint Petersburg in the early twentieth century before moving to England in the 1930s, and finally to the United States in 1939. Choreographer George Balanchine hired Dobuzhinsky to design stage sets for Ballet Imperial, set to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The ballet pays homage not only to Tchaikovsky’s expressive music, but also to the grandeur of St. Petersburg and imperial Russia, captured here in the scene’s regal backdrop and militaristic iconography on the curtains.
- Artist
- Mstislav Valerianovich Doboujinsky
- Title
- Stage design for Ballet Imperial (Hunter College Playhouse, New York, 1941)
- Date
- 1941
- Object Type
- Drawing
- Medium
- Watercolor, opaque watercolor, and graphite on paper mounted on board
- Dimensions
- Overall: 14 3/4 x 19 9/16 in. (37.5 x 49.7 cm) Framed: 22 3/4 x 28 3/4 in. (57.785 x 73.025 cm)
- Credit Line
- Theater and Dance Collection, Gift of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels
- Accession Number
- T&D1959.33