Lapitsky I.M. (1876-1944), stage director

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Personalia
LAPITSKY (alias Mikhailov) Iosif Mikhailovich (1876-1944), actor, opera and drama director, musical and public figure, Honoured Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1936). After graduating from the School of Law in 1897, and until 1900, he worked as an actor and stage director for M.A. Sablina-Dolskaya's theatre company. He spent the 1900/1901 season acting in Munich for E. Possart's company. In 1903 he worked at the Moscow Art Theatre under K.S. Stanislavsky. The latter's theatre concepts influenced all of Lapitsky's further activity as a theatre director. He was stage director at P.G. Solodovnikov's Opera Theatre from 1903 to 1906, becoming its art director in 1904. In 1906, he began producing occasional performances at the Bolshoy Theatre (1906-08, 1921, 1924-25, its manager and stage director from 1928). His best-known productions include The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov; Le Roi S'Amuse, or Rigoletto by G. Verdi; and M.P. Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina. From 1908 to 1911 he staged performances at the theatres of Perm, Samara, and Irkutsk. In 1912 Lapitsky founded the Theatre of Musical Drama in Petrograd, the first theatre for directed opera in Russia, initiating a reform of the operatic stage. There, through six seasons until 1919, Lapitsky produced performances that elicited such a strong response from the public that they earned a place in musical theatre history, including Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades by P.I. Tchaikovsky, G. Bizet's Carmen, Rimsky-Korsakov's Snowmaiden, Verdi's Aida and R. Wagner's Parsifal (the latter two productions were Russian premiers). In 1920-22 he established the Theatre of Musical Drama in Moscow, only to return to Petrograd later. During the 1923/1924 season he managed the opera company of the Leningrad Opera Theatre, staging the Russian premier of R. Strauss' Salomee at the Opera and Ballet Theatre (1924). In 1930-37 he directed the broadcast of Moscow Radio. He was also one of the founders and directors of opera theatres in Kiev, Kharkov and Donetsk. Lapitsky left behind numerous articles on the reform of the opera theatre.

References: Коломийцов В. Лапицкий // Театр. 1923. № 9. С. 1-2; Мозжухин А. Лапицкий как режиссер // Там же. С. 3; Левик С. Ю. Записки оперного певца. 2-е изд., перераб. и доп. М., 1962.

E. V. Tretyakova. Bizet Georges
Lapitsky (alias Mikhailov) Iosif Mikhailovich
Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich
Possart Ernst
Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolay Andreevich
Sablina-Dolskaya Maria Alexeevna
Solodovnikov P.G.
Stanislavsky Konstantin Sergeevich
Strauss Johann
Strauss Richard
Tchaikovsky Peter Ilyich
Verdi Giuseppe
Wagner Richard
Мозжухин А. Лапицкий как режиссер // Театр, 1923
Левик С. Ю. Записки оперного певца. 2-е изд., перераб. и доп. М., 1962
Коломийцов В. Лапицкий // Театр, 1923 Law School
Mariinsky Theatre