Author Description

This three-generation theatrical saga traces the accumulation of Russian theatrical culture and its impact on British and American theatre. The story began in Saint Petersburg on November 25, 1863, with the operatic debut of the tenor Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky at the Mariinsky Theatre. More than thirty years later, his daughter V era joined another imperial theatre, the Alexandrinsky. Finally, a decade later, came the first reviews of her half-brother, Fyodor Komissarzhevsky the younger, who began his career in the then relatively new profession of director. Fyodor Komissarzhevsky (1832-1905) was Stanislavsky's first and probably only teacher; Stanislavsky often said that he owed everything to their lessons and conversations. The turbulent, dramatic family life among the artistic intelligentsia was an ideal setting for Vera Komissarzhevsky (1864-1910), the Alexandrinsky Theatre's foremost actress and a friend of Chekhov, Rachmaninov, and Chaliapin. The younger Fyodor (1882-1954), an eminent theatre director in prerevolutionary Russia, was a dominant figure in the British theatre for twenty years before emigrating to America; those who owe artistic debts to him include John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, and Alec Guinness. Based on Russian and western archival material, unpublished letters and memoirs, theatrical reviews, and interviews, this beautifully illustrated artistic biography is a rare example of one family's enormous influence on the history and development of theatrical life across two continents.