Ostankino Palace and Serf Theater

The Ostankino Palace is a former summer residence of the Sheremetev family, originally located several kilometers north of Moscow, but now part of Moscow. This building was built in 1792-1798 around a theater hall.

The current day preservation of the theater in Ostankino Palace, which is now a museum.

Ostankino Palace is not known to be a theater in today’s Moscow. This ornate, large wooden building (third-largest wooden building in the world) is a former summer residence and private opera theatre of the Sheremetev family in the North-Eastern Administrative Okrug of Moscow. The original owner in the Count Nikolai Sheremetev (1751-1809) was the wealthiest man in Russia with 210,000 serfs. (In 1795 Russia, the population was 37 million with 360,000 noblesman owning the rest of the population, serfs – talk about the 1%! [1]) Count Sheremetev had a passion for theater and music. He constructed a theater and engaged in special education of serf children. One of his most talented students was Parasha Kovaleva whose stage name was “Pearl” who he later married in 1801, causing scandal across Russia. This story is recounted in the book, The Pearl by Douglas Smith, a book described as a “window into the richest and poorest inhabitants of imperial Russia” by the reviewer Simon Montefiore [2].

The serf theater founded in the Ostankino Palace was famous for its quality and serf theaters in Russia were part of Russia’s “Golden Age of Nobility.” Between 1770 and 1820, there were more than 20,000 serf-artists who performed across over 170 noble theaters [2]. This development of serf-theater developed from Catherine the Great’s giving unlimited power to the nobleman over their services. Serf-theater is an odd mix of freedom of expression and oppression. On one hand, theater was popular among noblesman in Imperial Russia and gave an opportunity for serfs to study performance art and participate in it. On the other hand, it is an example of how art was used as a tool of oppression as the serfs were still slaves and were still sold as serf-performers and even given as gifts. These private theaters even competed with the monarch’s theater and Englishman Maddo, the director of the Moscow Public Theater, the older version of the Bolshoi Theater, said that the Sheremetev’s productions took audiences away from the public theaters [3].

[1] Smith, Douglas. The Pearl: A True Tale of For bidden Love in Catherine the Great’s Russia. 2000, New Haven.

[2] Montefiore, Simon. The serf who married her owner.  June, 2008. The Telegraph.

[3] Naroditskaya, Inna. Betwitching Russia Opera: The Tsarina form State to Stage. 2012, Oxford. pg 73.