November 8 1864 years
She was born in St. Petersburg Vera Komissarzhevskaya — actress, prima of the Silver Age theater. "The Seagull of the Russian Stage."
Take on a role and feel, feel as if it all happened to you, completely forgetting that someone else is portrayed, not like you. And only when you're completely immersed in this suffering, joy, chaos or peace, can you remember that it's not you.
His father was an opera singer whom the Emperor himself listened to. Alexander II. Celebrities often visited the house, and Vera began performing on the amateur stage early on.
She had to take up theatre seriously on the advice of doctors – to save herself from mental illness after an unsuccessful marriage (her husband left her for her sister).
At 26 she made her debut Stanislavsky (her father's student). She played dozens of roles in comedies and vaudevilles: Sophia in "Woe from Wit," Larisa in "The Dowry," and Varya in "The Wild One." Her most famous role was Nina Zarechnaya in Chekhov's "The Seagull."
No one understood me so truly, so truthfully, so deeply as Vera Fedorovna... A wonderful actress
(Chekhov)
Audiences admired Komissarzhevskaya's acting style: she played her roles unconventionally, improvising, and pouring her heart into them. Colleagues called her "an actress with a certain interesting coolness."
I play roles that speak very little to the mind and almost nothing to the soul. I absolutely must empathize with my heroine. I must irrigate each role with my heart's blood.
She donated part of her earnings to the needs of the revolution. She interacted with workers and teachers, and attended Sunday schools.
I look at the need that surrounds me, and I remember the life that we, the “chosen ones,” lead—or, more accurately, those who have chosen ourselves—and such melancholy and sadness overwhelm me that my soul cannot drown them out or drink them away.
She hated the mediocre roles in vaudeville. In 1904, she opened her own independent theater in the Passage building on Nevsky Prospekt. To raise money, she toured the regions for two years.
In 1908, the authorities banned one of the theater's productions, "The Princess" based on the play Oscar Wilde "Salome".
I spoke not as a member of parliament, but as a Russian citizen obligated to stand guard over Orthodoxy. We will continue to act in the same way: if the play had been performed, the Union of Archangel Michael [monarchists] would have bought up the front rows of seats, and we would have forced the show to be stopped.
(Deputy Vladimir Purishkevich)
Never able to recover from the blow, she left her own theater in 1909. She wanted to open a theater school, but in 1910, at the age of 45, she died of smallpox while on tour in Tashkent.
At the funeral of the actress in Petersburg Tickets were distributed - thousands of fans came to say goodbye.
During the Siege of Leningrad, a city theater was founded, later named after her. It continues to operate to this day, in the same location where Komissarzhevskaya performed with her troupe in the early 20th century.
When I die, I want my tombstone to read: "Sensing the truth with my mind and heart... she was unable to surrender to it." How hard it will be to lie under a stone with such an inscription. But the soul will depart without deception.