Society and Culture: The "Bulgakov and Moliere" exhibition in Moscow

On March 10, 2016, on a day of commemoration of Mikhail Bulgakov the Museum of Mikhail Bulgakov (Moscow) opens the "Bulgakov and Moliere" exhibition. The exhibition is dedicated to the history of creation and the first stage production of the "The Cabal of Hypocrites (Moliere)" play.

The relation of Mikhail Bulgakov to the French playwright was very intimate. No wonder that Bulgakov’s "Moleriana" ("The Cabal of Hypocrites," "The Crazy Jourdain" (an adapted translation of "The Bourgeois Gentleman", "The Miser," a biographical novel "Moliere")) is autobiographical in many respects. Bulgakov has clearly seen a reflection of his own destiny in an unequal confrontation between a playwright and the authorities.

The fate of Bulgakov's play about Moliere became one of the most tragic pages in the writer’s biography of Bulgakov.

A production of the incredibly complicated and expensive performance was going in the course of as many as 296 long rehearsals. It premiered on February 16, 1936. The play was shown only seven times. After an article in "Pravda" paper on March 9, 1936, entitled “Butterfly Perfections with Deceptive Matter", it was once and for all forbidden. Thus, "Moliere" became the last play that K. S. Stanislavsky staged at the Moscow Art Theater, and the last play of Bulgakov that saw the stage lights during author’s lifetime.

The exhibition presents rare typewritten entries, photos, documents and publications from the museum collection. The "Bulgakov and Moliere" exhibition is the fourteenth story in the "Words and Objects: The Collection Opening" cycle, dedicated to the research of the stock of the Museum of Mikhail Bulgakov.