Russian Serf Theatre
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Russian Serf Theatre
Russian Serf Theatre refers to theatrical productions performed by serfs for their owners. Russian serf theaters dates back from the early to mid eighteenth century when the nobility began organizing their serfs to put on shows for each other. In 1795 the Russian population was 37 million, of whom the vast majority were serfs, owned by a mere 360,000 male nobles. The average aristocrat owned just 60 serfs and only 11 per cent owned more than 1000 . In the late eighteenth century it became popular to employ serfs to mount productions of operas, ballets or plays. More than 2,000 of these slave-artists performed in more than 170 noble theaters and were bought and sold wholesale while at the same time becoming stars. For example, Prince Potemkin bought the whole serf orchestra of Count Kirill Razumovski for 40,000 rubles. As the popularity of drama grew in Russia, competition developed between the nobles as to who could host the most impressive performances. While the majority of ...
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Theatrical Production
A theatrical production is any work of theatre, such as a staged play, musical, comedy or drama produced from a written book or script. Theatrical productions also extend to other performance designations such as Dramatic and Nondramatic theatre, as well as Dance theatre. These works are protected by common law or statuary copyright unless in the public domain. These productions generally feature actors, costumes and sets. The History of theatre, history of the theatrical production goes back to Theatre of ancient Greece, ancient Greece. Theatrical productions vary in many ways. They can be anything from high school as well as college productions, community theatre productions to summer stock and regional theatre productions all the way to Broadway and Kings Road productions. Today's contemporary theatres produce a variety of plays and musicals that attract very different audiences. In full theatrical productions there are a great number of people working towards many types of sho ...
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Serfdom In Russia
The term '' serf'', in the sense of an unfree peasant of tsarist Russia, is the usual English-language translation of () which meant an unfree person who, unlike a slave, historically could be sold only with the land to which they were "attached". Peter I ended slavery in Russia in 1723. Contemporary legal documents, such as ''Russkaya Pravda'' (12th century onwards), distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. Serfdom became the dominant form of relation between Russian peasants and nobility in the 17th century. Serfdom most commonly existed in the central and southern areas of the Tsardom of Russia and, from 1721, of the subsequent Russian Empire. Serfdom in Little Russia (parts of today central Ukraine), and other Cossack lands, in the Urals and in Siberia generally occurred rarely until, during the reign of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796), it spread to Ukraine; noblemen began to send their serfs into Cossack lands in an attempt to harvest their ex ...
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Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. It also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. Covering an area of approximately , it remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the 1897 Russian census, which was the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. Owing to its geographic extent across three continents at its peak, it featured great ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic diversity. From the 10th–17th centuries, the land ...
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Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy is historically associated with "hereditary" or "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Rome, or India, aristocratic status came from belonging to a military caste. It has also been common, notably in African societies, for aristocrats to belong to priestly dynasties. Aristocratic status can involve feudal or legal privileges. They are usually below only the monarch of a country or nation in its social hierarchy. In modern European societies, the aristocracy has often coincided with the nobility, a specific class that arose in the Middle Ages, but the term "aristocracy" is sometimes also applied to other elites, and is used as a more generic term when describing earlier and non-European societies. Some revolutions, such as the French Revolution, have been followed by the abolition of the aristocracy. Etymology The term ar ...
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Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as '' Singspiel'' and '' Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of ...
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Ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary. Ballet has been influential globally and has defined the foundational techniques which are used in many other dance genres and cultures. Various schools around the world have incorporated their own cultures. As a result, ballet has evolved in distinct ways. A ''ballet'' as a unified work comprises the choreography and music for a ballet production. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained ballet dancers. Traditional classical ballets are usually performed with classical music accompaniment and use elaborate costumes and staging, whereas modern ballets are often performed in simple costumes and without elaborate sets or scenery. Etymology Ballet is a French word which had its origin in Italian ...
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Grigory Potemkin
Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski (, also , ;, rus, Князь Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Потёмкин-Таври́ческий, Knjaz' Grigórij Aleksándrovich Potjómkin-Tavrícheskij, ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ pɐˈtʲɵmkʲɪn tɐˈvrʲitɕɪskʲɪj; A number of dates as late as 1742 have been found on record; the veracity of any one is unlikely to be proved. This is his "official" birth-date as given on his tombstone.), more accurately spelled Grigory Aleksandrovich Potyomkin-Tavricheski, was a Russian military leader, statesman, nobleman, and favourite of Catherine the Great. He died during negotiations over the Treaty of Jassy (now Iași), which ended a war with the Ottoman Empire that he had overseen. Potemkin was born into a family of middle-income noble landowners. He first attracted Catherine's favor for helping in her 1762 coup, then distinguished himself as a military commander in the Russo-Turkish War ...
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Kirill Razumovski
Count Kirill Grigoryevich Razumovski, anglicized as Cyril Grigoryevich Razumovski (russian: Кирилл Григорьевич Разумовский, uk, Кирило Григорович Розумовський ''Kyrylo Hryhorovych Rozumovsky''; 18 March 1728 – 1 January 1803) was a Russian Imperial statesman of Ukrainian Cossack descent, who served as the last Hetman of Zaporozhian Host on both sides of the Dnieper (from 1750 until 1764) and then as a Field marshal in the Russian Imperial Army. Razumovsky was the President of the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences from 1746 until 1798. Biography Razumovsky was born to a family of low rank Cossack Hryhoriy Rozum in Lemeshi Russian Empire, Kiev Regiment on 18 March 1728.Putro, O. Kyrylo Rozumovsky (РОЗУМОВСЬКИЙ КИРИЛО ГРИГОРОВИЧ)'. Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine. The village Lemeshi where Razumovsky was born to this day stands in Chernihiv Raion, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine. F ...
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Praskovia Kovalyova
Praskovia Ivanovna Kovalyova-Zhemchugova also Kovaleva or Kovalyova, Kovaleva-Zhemchugova, Zhemchugova-Sheremeteva, and Sheremeteva or Sheremetyeva (''Прасковья Ивановна Жемчугова'', ''Ковалёва'', ''Шереметева'') (July 20, 1768 – February 23, 1803) was a Russian serf actress and soprano opera singer. Career Praskovia was one of the best opera singers in eighteenth-century Russia. and Figes describes her as Russia's first "superstar". She was born into the family of a serf blacksmith by the name of Ivan Gorbunov (a.k.a. Kovalyov) probably on the estate of Voshchazhnikovo in the province of Yaroslavl. Praskovia and her family belonged to the Sheremetevs, one of the richest noble families in Russia at the time, along with an estimated one million other serfs. As a young girl she moved with her family to the estate of Kuskovo outside Moscow. Soon thereafter she was taken from her family to serve as a chambermaid to Princess Mart ...
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Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the term—a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch)—but was usually considered by western Europeans to be equivalent to "king". It lends its name to a system of government, tsarist autocracy or tsarism. "Tsar" and its variants were the official titles of the following states: * Bulgarian Empire (First Bulgarian Empire in 681–1018, Second Bulgarian Empire in 1185–1396), and also used in Kingdom of Bulgaria, Tsardom of Bulgaria, in 1908–1946 * Serbian Empire, in 1346–1371 * Tsardom of Russia, in 1547–1721 (replaced in 1721 by ''imperator'' in Russian Empire, but still re ...
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Theatre In Russia
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe"). Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice ...
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