Russia's Theatrical Past

Claudia Jensen is Affiliate Instructor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington. She is author of Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia and editor (with Miloš Velimirović) of Nikolai Findeizen's History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800, volumes 1 and 2. Ingrid Maier is Professor Emerita of Russian at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University. She has published several monographs on modern and historical Russian linguistics, Russian cultural history, and Russian translations of 17th-century newspapers, including editions of these translations (Vesti-Kuranty). Stepan Shamin is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences. He is author (in Russian) of Foreign "Pamphlets" and "Curiosities" in Russia from the 16th to the Beginning of the 18th Centuries and Seventeenth-Century Kuranty. Daniel C. Waugh is Professor Emeritus of History, International Studies, and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington. He is author of The Great Turkes Defiance and (in Russian) of History of a Book: Viatka and "Non-modernity" in Russian Culture in the Era of Peter the Great.

• AcknowledgmentsA Note on Dates, Transliteration, and TranslationList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: The Comedians Come to Pskov1. Court Music at Home and Abroad2. The Theater of Diplomacy3. Introducing Pickleherring: The Origins of the Russian Court Theater4. The Plays and "Ballets" for the Tsar5. The Play of Tamerlane6. From Tamerlane to Tamerlane and BeyondBibliographyIndex

Russia's Theatrical Past: Court Entertainment in the Seventeenth Century presents an exceptional model of what can be achieved through international cooperation. Russia's Theatrical Past convincingly reveals how Russia's importation of musical and theatrical culture began before Peter the Great's reign and presents a strong argument for why Russia should be included on the grand map of Europe's theatrical world even before Peter's "Europeanization" of the country.- Maria Berlova (Scando-Slavica) This study makes an important contribution to the question of quality and periodization of West-Eastern cultural exchange. We hope it will be widely received and we look forward to further studies by the four authors.(Franz Steiner Verlag Journals)