03.03.2019 /

Three Stories About Actors from Kharkiv in the Mid-19th to Early 20th Centuries

As a rule, when it comes to the history of Kharkiv theater from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, most people think only of Mark Lukich Kropyvnytskyi, widely recognized as the “father of Ukrainian theater,” and the Dukovs’ work as theater impresarios.
However, there were other famous theater actors in our city as well.
Nowadays, the name of Fyodor Petrovich Gorev, who was born in Kharkiv in 1850, unfortunately means little to most people. Our fellow townsman began his artistic career at the age of 16 by performing in amateur productions. Starting in 1866, Gorev performed in provincial theaters in Kharkiv and Sumy. It was not until 1877 that Fyodor Petrovich made his debut on the imperial stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. After that, from 1882 until his death in 1910, Gorev performed on the stage of Moscow’s Maly Theater, playing more than 300 roles over the course of his life.

In her memoir, *The Days of My Life*, the wonderful writer, playwright, poet, and translator Tatyana Lvovna Shchepkina-Kupernik devoted Chapter XV to our fellow townsman and described him in vivid detail:

“Is it possible to pass over in silence such a striking figure as Fyodor Petrovich Gorev, who served as the Maly Theater’s principal dancer for 16 years?
…People without an education, relying solely on talent, who had never taken any courses but relied entirely on instinct—people for whom there was no life outside the theater, whose love, soul, and even death were all theatrical.
Such was Gorev. He was so brilliant on stage that in real life it never even occurred to anyone to make any demands of him. What mattered was that on stage he was an amazing lover, a brave hero who performed acts of nobility and made people believe that this nobility was no illusion; and it didn’t matter at all that in real life he was a simple-minded man, who loved to drink and carouse, played cards, and got caught up in some not particularly flattering incidents that once even landed him in the dock. And there—in court—it was not this weak man who was on trial, but the magnificent actor. The lawyer defending him, the well-known N. P. Shubinsky, wrote his closing statement and said sternly:

“Fyodor Petrovich, learn it by heart and recite it, but don’t you dare say anything else on your own.”

Gorev memorized the “final statement” as a monologue—and delivered it in such a way that the jurors, without a moment’s hesitation, acquitted him.

This man was, as it were, an unwitting conduit for beautiful thoughts, poetic inspirations, and noble feelings that remained a mystery even to himself…

…Gorev was breathtakingly handsome, possessing the kind of beauty you see in classical paintings and encounter in ancient sculpture—a beauty that calls for purple cloaks, golden armor, and laurel wreaths. Bucket hats, blazers, and cigars didn’t suit him at all: he was too “ornamental” for the modern age, as if one were to dress the Venus de Milo in a fashionable dress and cinch her into a corset. The result was something unnatural. His beauty, combined with his talent, certainly sparked frequent infatuations. But true love—this artist of love neither knew nor inspired. He literally courted every woman who crossed his path.

The name of another fellow countryman is just as impressive as the previous one. After all, thanks to the sheer power of his talent, he was also considered one of the best actors of his time.

He was born in the village of Kantemirovka (Kharkiv Governorate) on September 2, 1865, into the noble Neelov family and was named after the martyr Mamont of Caesarea. He received his early education at the Kyiv Gymnasium. Although a number of publications, both before and after 1917, state that our hero continued his studies at the Faculty of Law of Kharkiv Imperial University, this is not the case. No one with the surname Neelov appears in the student rosters from the 1880s. After several years of study at the law school of Kyiv University, Mamont Neelov dropped out, adopted the pseudonym Dalsky, and went into theater.

In 1886, Dalsky was offered a position in Vorontsov’s theater company in Vilnius, where our fellow townsman almost immediately became a leading actor. After several years of touring the provinces, in 1889 Dalsky received an offer from the writer P. D. Boborykin to join the troupe of E. Goreva’s theater, which was opening in Moscow. It was there that he finally achieved fame.

Dalsky’s exceptional performance caught the attention of P. M. Medvedev, the chief director of the Alexandrinsky Theater, who invited the young actor to join the state-funded troupe “without a debut.” Thanks to this, on September 8, 1890, Mamont Dalsky made his first appearance on the stage of that theater. The actor, who enjoyed immense popularity, worked there for another 10 years.

At the same time, Fyodor Chaliapin—who was then still a budding singer—became a close friend of our fellow townsman. The famous actor Yuri Mikhailovich Yuryev recalls this in his notes as follows:

Shalyapin was deeply captivated by Dalsky’s acting. They quickly became friends and were almost inseparable…
Their shared interests brought them closer together. Both were gifted and passionate. Both possessed a very strong creative spirit. This common ground gave rise to all sorts of plans, dreams, and heated debates. At that time, Chaliapin was merely a promising young singer just starting out. He hadn’t quite found his footing yet, but he was already dreaming of becoming not only a good singer with a beautiful voice, but also a true artist—of combining the vocal aspect of performance with the stage embodiment of a character, of creating roles, in short, he aspired to be both a singer and a dramatic actor—something that, with rare exceptions, few on the opera stage cared about at the time…
He admired Dalsky and, having come to trust his authority, constantly sought his advice while working on one role or another, striving to perfect the parts he had already performed many times, and seeking, with Dalsky’s help, to bring something new and and to break away from the established forms—mistakenly called “traditions”—without repeating what his predecessors had done…

For the next 18 years, Mamont Dalsky toured the provinces (including our city), performed on stages in the capital and at private theaters, organized public evenings of tragedy, attempted to establish his own theater, and became involved in anarchism.
In his famous novel *The Ordeal*, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy describes our renowned fellow townsman as follows:

…The life and soul of these nighttime revelries was Mamont Dalsky, a dramatic actor and tragedian whose name, in the recent past, had been no less renowned than Rossi’s. He was a man of wild temperament, a handsome man, a gambler, a calculating madman—dangerous, majestic, and cunning. In recent years, he had performed rarely, only on tour. He was seen in gambling houses in the capitals, in the south, and in Siberia. People told stories of his monstrous losses. He was beginning to grow old. He said he was quitting the stage. During the war, he was involved in shady dealings related to supplies. When the revolution began, he appeared in Moscow. He sensed a colossal, tragic stage and wanted to play the leading role in a new production of *The Robber Brothers*. With all the conviction of a brilliant actor, he spoke of sacred anarchy and absolute freedom, of the arbitrariness of moral principles and everyone’s right to everything. He stirred up excitement in the minds of Muscovites. When isolated groups of young people, reinforced by criminals, began seizing mansions, he united these scattered groups of anarchists, forcibly seized the Merchants’ Club, and declared it the House of Anarchy. He presented the Soviet authorities with a fait accompli. He had not yet declared war on the Soviet authorities, but his imagination undoubtedly soared beyond the Merchants’ Club’s storerooms and nighttime revelries when, standing at a window in the courtyard of the House, he spoke to the people, and, following his dramatic gesture, pants, boots, scraps of cloth, and bottles of cognac flew down into the courtyard, into the crowd. This man—with a somber face, as if cast in bronze, on which passions and a turbulent life, like a great sculptor, had etched folds, wrinkles, and the resolute lines of his mouth, chin, and neck—framed by a soft, dirty collar—was the first person Dasha saw when she entered the “Metropol” office with Zhirov…

The great actor died on June 21, 1918. While on his way to visit his friend Fyodor Chaliapin, Dalsky lost his footing on the tram step and fell under the wheels.

No less illustrious was the name of Konstantin Pavlovich Larin. He was born in our city into a noble family in 1863. He received his early education at home, and at the age of 12, in 1875, he enrolled in the Kharkiv Real School. While studying there, Larin not only took an active part in amateur theater productions but also staged them at his own home. In 1881, after graduating from the school, Konstantin Pavlovich joined one of impresario P. M. Medvedev’s theater companies in our city. He then performed in Simferopol, Yalta, Orenburg, Kharkiv, and St. Petersburg. The year 1885 proved to be a turning point in Larin’s life as an actor. In Kronstadt, he happened to have to prompt for several performances. Konstantin Pavlovich performed this task so skillfully and professionally that he attracted far more attention than the actors themselves, and after that he devoted himself entirely to acting. In the fall of 1889, while in Kharkiv, Larin received an invitation from the renowned writer and playwright Alexei Antipovich Potekhin to work at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg.

By the early 20th century, Larin was already considered one of the best prompter in the entire empire at that time. The actor also tried his hand at playwriting—between 1899 and 1903 alone, he wrote more than forty plays. Most were farces and lighthearted comedies, which is why they remained staples of the repertoire at many theaters. By 1900, Larin already had his own theater in Arkhangelsk, and by 1901, he had theaters in Kolpino and Terioki.

After that, Larin’s trail goes cold. All that is known is that the actor, director at the Alexandrinsky Theater, and playwright died in 1940.

It’s also worth noting that our city played an extremely important role in the lives and careers of quite a few actors and opera singers of that era. And the biographies of the wonderful theater actresses who hail from Kharkiv are no less captivating and interesting. But more on that next time…

Anton Bondarev
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CategoriesActors and singers