Teatral'naia starina - Drizen Nikolai Vasil'evich

This book tells about how a professional domestic theatre grew out of the amateur passions of Russian emperors and empresses. From jesters with karls and carlis Anna Ioanovna, young cadets in wigs in the time of Elizabeth Petrovna, nuns and "noble maidens" during the reign of Catherine the Great. Princes and princesses in the images of ancient Greek priests, foreign diplomats depicting celestial luminaries, diamonds of the Empress on yesterday's yard maidens, suddenly turned stars of the Russian scene. You will read about all this in the book, which is based on the notes of Nikolai Dizen (1868-1935) - an ascetic of Russian theatrical art of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, "a real stage fanatic."