Tatyana Repina

The sensational onstage suicide of Russian actress and opera singer Kadmina in 1881 led Alexei Suvorin to memorialize her in his 1888 four-act play Tatyana Repina. One year later, his friend Anton Chekhov, himself fascinated by Kadmina, sent Suvorin a one-act play, which was in fact a fifth act continuation of Tatyana Repina, with instructions to show it to no one. When the play was finally made public years later by Chekhov's brother Mikhail, it presented a Was it, as the brother claimed, a parody? Or was the brother simply distancing himself from a then controversial Suvorin? Russian historian and linguist John Racin examines the enormous documentary record to make the case that Chekhov's one-act was written as an earnest artistic complement to Suvorin's. Racin's convictions led him to retranslate both Tatyana Repina s, presented here with additional relevant texts.

The sensational onstage suicide of Russian actress and opera singer Kadmina in 1881 led Alexei Suvorin to memorialize her in his 1888 four-act play Tatyana Repina. One year later, his friend Anton Chekhov, himself fascinated by Kadmina, sent Suvorin a one-act play, which was in fact a fifth act continuation of Tatyana Repina, with instructions to show it to no one. When the play was finally made public years later by Chekhov's brother Mikhail, it presented a Was it, as the brother claimed, a parody? Or was the brother simply distancing himself from a then controversial Suvorin? Russian historian and linguist John Racin examines the enormous documentary record to make the case that Chekhov's one-act was written as an earnest artistic complement to Suvorin's. Racin's convictions led him to retranslate both Tatyana Repina s, presented here with additional relevant texts.