"Henrik Ibsen - Hedda Gabler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ibsen Henrik)

performance took place at the Residenz Theater, Munich, on the last
day of January 1891, in the presence of the poet, Frau Conrad-Ramlo
playing the title-part. The Lessing Theater, Berlin, followed suit
on February 10. Not till February 25 was the play seen in Copenhagen,
with Fru Hennings as Hedda. On the following night it was given for
the first time in Christiania, the Norwegian Hedda being Froken
Constance Bruun. It was this production which the poet saw when he
visited the Christiania Theater for the first time after his return
to Norway, August 28, 1891. It would take pages to give even the
baldest list of the productions and revivals of _Hedda Gabler_ in
Scandinavia and Germany, where it has always ranked among Ibsen's
most popular works. The admirable production of the play by Miss
Elizabeth Robins and Miss Marion Lea, at the Vaudeville Theatre,
London, April 20, 1891, may rank as the second great step towards the
popularisation of Ibsen in England, the first being the Charrington-
Achurch production of _A Doll's House_ in 1889. Miss Robins
afterwards repeated her fine performance of Hedda many times, in
London, in the English provinces, and in New York. The character has
also been acted in London by Eleonora Duse, and as I write (March, 5,
1907) by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, at the Court Theatre. In Australia
and America, Hedda has frequently been acted by Miss Nance O'Neill
and other actresses--quite recently by a Russian actress, Madame Alla
Nazimova, who (playing in English) seems to have made a notable
success both in this part and in Nora. The first French Hedda Gabler
was Mlle. Marthe Brandes, who played the part at the Vaudeville
Theatre, Paris, on December 17, 1891, the performance being introduced
by a lecture by M. Jules Lemaitre. In Holland, in Italy, in Russia,
the play has been acted times without number. In short (as might
easily have been foretold) it has rivalled _A Doll's House_ in world-
wide popularity.

It has been suggested,(4) I think without sufficient ground, that Ibsen
deliberately conceived _Hedda Gabler_ as an "international" play, and
that the scene is really the "west end" of any European city. To me
it seems quite clear that Ibsen had Christiania in mind, and the
Christiania of a somewhat earlier period than the 'nineties. The
electric cars, telephones, and other conspicuous factors in the life
of a modern capital are notably absent from the play. There is no
electric light in Secretary Falk's villa. It is still the habit for
ladies to return on foot from evening parties, with gallant swains
escorting them. This "suburbanism," which so distressed the London
critics of 1891, was characteristic of the Christiania Ibsen himself
had known in the 'sixties--the Christiania of _Love's Comedy_--rather
than of the greatly extended and modernised city of the end of the
century. Moreover Lovborg's allusions to the fiord, and the suggested
picture of Sheriff Elvsted, his family and his avocations are all
distinctively Norwegian. The truth seems to be very simple--the
environment and the subsidiary personages are all thoroughly national,
but Hedda herself is an "international" type, a product of civilisation
by no means peculiar to Norway.