Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky
Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky (
Biography
Komissarzhevsky was born near
Komissarzhevsky remained at the Mariinsky Theatre until 1880 and then moved to Moscow where he sang at the Bolshoi Theatre as well as directing several operas there, including The Magic Flute and Cherubini's The Water Carrier (an opera hitherto unknown in Moscow). Following his retirement from the stage, Komissarzhevsky taught singing and acting at the Moscow Conservatory from 1883 to 1888. Amongst his private students was Konstantin Stanislavski, who had originally hoped to become an opera singer.[4] When Stanislavski founded the Society of Art and Literature in 1888, Komissarzhevsky became the first head of the operatic and musical section of its school. He parted company with the Society after a year and then spent some years at the conservatory in Tbilisi where he taught singing as well as writing reviews. After Tbilisi he went to Italy, travelling around the country until he finally settled in the coastal town of Sanremo. Komissarzhevsky died there on 14 March 1905 at the age of 74 while tending his roses.[7] He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome where the inscription on his gravestone reads:
"Teodoro Komisarjevsky di Pietro, artist of the Italian opera and the Imperial Opera of St. Petersburg, professor at the Moscow Conservatory, and a soldier in Garibaldi's legions, died on the soil of his beloved Italy."[5]
Family
Komissarzhevsky's first wife was Mariya Nikolaevna Shulgina, the daughter of General Nikolai Shulgin, a war hero and officer in the
In 1880, Komissarzhevsky had abandoned the family for his mistress, Princess Maria Kurtsevich, who like his first wife had been one of his pupils. By 1882, she was pregnant with their son, Fyodor. His first wife agreed to a divorce as the guilty party so that he and his mistress could marry and their child could be legitimised.[10] Fyodor became a famous theatre director, known outside Russia as Theodore Komisarjevsky. He emigrated to Britain in 1921 and later lived in the United States, where he died in 1954. Fyodor's younger brother Nikolai, who became a writer, remained in Russia and was executed during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in 1938.
By the late 1880s Komissarzhevsky's second marriage had also foundered, and he was to spend the rest of his life essentially alone, although he frequently corresponded with his first wife and with his daughter Vera, who would also visit him as much as she could.[11] Towards the end of his life he wrote to her mother:
Vera!? To say that she is often in my thoughts... would be an understatement, for never a moment passes without my thinking of her! My whole being rests on my feelings and my thoughts about her. She is to my spirit what air is to physical existence! Human being, friend, daughter, sister, family—everything is concentrated in her alone...[12]
Notes and references
- ^ According to Borovsky (2001) p. 1, his birth year has been erroneously given as variously 1830, 1834, and 1838. The 1832 date is taken from one of Komissarzhevski's own letters. The spelling of his surname used in this article is that used in the current standard English reference works. However, it has also been transcribed in non-Russian sources as Kommissarzhevsky, Komisarzhevsky, Komissarzhevski, Komisarjevsky, Kommissarievskij, and Komissartschevsky.
- ^ Semeonoff (2008) p. 253
- St. Petersburg Conservatoryfrom 1863.
- ^ a b Carnegy (2006) p. 211
- ^ a b Academy of Denmark, Rome, Protestant Cemetery Database: Stone 1576. (Original Italian: "Teodoro Komisarjevsky di Pietro. Artista lirico dell'opera italiana e dell'opera imperiale a Pietroburgo, professore al conservatorio di Mosca e combattente nelle legioni garibaldine, morì sul suolo della sua amata Italia") For a photograph of Komissarzhevsky's grave see the plate facing p, 66 of Borovsky (2001)
- ^ Sylvester (2004) pp. 192–193
- ^ Borovsky (2001) pp. 66–67
- ^ Borovsky (2001) p. 28
- ^ Swift (2002) p. 73
- ^ In Russia at that time, the guilty party in a divorce could not remarry. See Borovsky (2001) p. 33.
- ^ The account of Komissarzhevsky's family in this section is based on Borovsky (2001).
- ^ quoted in Borovsky (2001) p. 65
Sources
- Borovsky, Victor, A Triptych from the Russian Theatre: An Artistic Biography of the Komissarzhevskys, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-85065-412-3
- Carnegy, Patrick, Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-300-10695-5
- Semeonoff, Boris, "Komissarzhevsky, Fyodor Petrovich", The Grove Book of Opera Singers, Laura Macy (ed), Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 253. ISBN 0-19-533765-4
- Swift, Eugène Anthony, Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia , University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 0-520-22594-5
- Sylvester, Richard D., Tchaikovsky's Complete Songs, Indiana University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-253-21676-1