Pickleherring Returns to the Kremlin: More New Sources on the Pre-History of the Russian Court Theatre

Abstract

This article, a continuation of “Orpheus and Pickleherring in the Kremlin: The ‘Ballet’ for the Tsar of February 1672” (Scando-Slavica 59:2), focuses on the second performance given for Tsar Aleksej Michajlovič by foreign residents of Moscow. This encore production, in May 1672, expanded upon the programme of the February event: it was longer, featured more characters on stage, and even included some female characters (certainly portrayed by male performers). In addition to revealing this May entertainment, we discuss the identities of the performers (largely drawn from the merchant population of Moscow's Foreign Quarter), and we suggest that the author of the eyewitness account describing the February performance was Christoff Koch (ennobled von Kochen), a Swedish correspondent and commercial representative in Moscow. Almost simultaneously with the May performance, the Russian court began to make plans for a more permanent theatre; we trace the court's attempts to contact the important German acting troupe headed by the Paulsen and Velten families. Finally, we discuss the impacts these two performances may have had on the plays offered by the tsar's court theatre beginning in October 1672, with special focus on the character Pickleherring.