Theater old man. Pages of the History of the Russian Theater

This book talks about how a professional domestic theater grew out of amateur hobbies of Russian emperors and empresses. From the jesters with the Carls and Karlitsa of Anna Ioannovna, the young cadets in wigs during the time of Elizabeth Petrovna, the nuns and "noble girls" during the reign of Catherine the Great ...
Princes and princesses in the images of ancient Greek priests, foreign diplomats depicting heavenly luminaries, the diamonds of the empress in yesterday"s courtyard girls, who suddenly turned out to be the stars of the Russian stage. About all this - in the book, which is based on notes by Nikolai Drisen (1868-1935), a real ascetic of Russian theatrical art of the turn of the XIX -XX centuries, according to contemporaries - "real fanatic of the stage"