Ah, St. Petersburg! Life at its Best, Really!

On 7 April, 2002, the Inspector General at the Hermitage Project opened its exhibition. The State Hermitage Museum, State Theater and Music Museum and other museums and theaters of St. Petersburg take part in the project. It has two parts, the exhibition "Ah, St. Petersburg! Life at its Best, Really!" in the Hermitage Theater Foyer and the show "Labardan-s, or Performance without a Protagonist in 11 Episodes" on the Hermitage Theater stage.
The exhibition "Ah, St. Petersburg! Life at its Best, Really!" tells about the phenomenon of this masterpiece of comedy, the history of its creation, Russian stage versions and the play's role in the public life of St. Petersburg and Russia. The exhibition's leitmotif is the play Inspector General in the context of the history of St. Petersburg/Leningrad.
The genre of the show "Labardan-s, or Performance without a Protagonist in 11 Episodes" may be described as a literary theatrical fantasy. Both Gogol's characters from the Inspector General and other plays and historical personages took part in the performance accompanied by the music of the State Hermitage Orchestra. The Inspector General at the Hermitage is an interesting reconstruction of the play's one and a half centuries' history. It shows the undying fascination of the Inspector General, its actuality and the continuity of the satirical tradition in Russian literature and theater.

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Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky at the opening of the exhibition

Audience in the Hermitage Theater

Scene from the play