The Suvorin Theatre on the Eve of the 20th Century: 1897–1901

This article analyzes the Suvorin Theatre’s performances in St. Petersburg from 1897 to 1901. It describes the theatre’s repertoire in the chronological order of its appearance on stage. The author focuses on the theatre’s leading actors – Lydia Yavorskaya, Yakov Tinsky, and Pavel Orlenev – and the performances of “The Princess of Greza”, “Cyrano de Bergerac”, “The Drowned Bell”, “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich”, and “The Merry Days of Rasplyuyev”, in which they fully revealed their talents and made their mark on Russian theatre history. The study utilized historical and documentary analysis, which consisted of systematizing and analyzing articles from periodicals of the time (“Teatr i Iskusstvo”, “Birzhevye Vedomosti”, “Peterburgskii Listok”, and “Russkaya Muzykalnaya Gazeta”), allowing for the collection of critics’ opinions on the Suvorin Theatre’s performances. Using the historical-contextual method, an assessment was made of cultural-historical phenomena in a specific historical context, in this case the turn of the 19th–20th centuries; the method of comparative analysis was also used in the study of the theatre’s repertoire, performers, and premiere performances.