Ru
EnA. Selitsky
Grigori Valliano: materials for a biography. The last season. Article four
Grigori Valliano (1830–1888) was a well-known provincial actor and entrepreneur throughout Russia, one of the pioneers of operetta theatre in the country. After successful creative but financially ruinous seasons in Rostov, after several years of wandering through other people’s enterprises in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities, he found refuge in Vladikavkaz, where he headed the artists’ company in the 1887/88 season, which turned out to be the last in his life. This period of Valliano’s work has never been described or comprehended before. “The Terek Gazette” as a newspaper which published information and analytical notes about the theatre in almost every issue, allows you to reconstruct the course of the season and its results: the repertoire, the changeable degree of audience interest, the material component and other aspects of the Vladikavkaz company functioning.
Assumptions are made about the motives of Grigori Valliano’s choice of this particular settlement, and its features are characterized – geographical, military-strategic, administrative, social, national, cultural. A brief description of the city theatre, one of the oldest in the North Caucasus, is also presented.
From the end of September to the beginning of March, 100 performances were staged, 46 of them operettas. The season went on with varying success, which was determined by the number of screenings of a particular performance. So, the “Gypsy Baron” passed five times, “Hadji Murad” – four. In some productions, the decorator was the young Kosta Khetagurov, an outstanding national poet, the founder of Ossetia fiction and the Ossetia literary language, who is rightfully considered the first professional artist of Ossetia. The relationship ended in an unpleasant incident: Khetagurov accused Valliano of disproportionately low remuneration for his work.
In recent months, Valliano has been ill, his voice has irreparably disappeared. The Vladikavkaz season is not the brightest page in the professional life of a theatrical figure, but recreating this page is necessary for the completeness of his creative biography.
Key words
operetta in Russia, Vladikavkaz, Kosta Khetagurov, provincial theatrical critique, “The Terek Gazette” newspaper.
For citation
Selitsky A. Grigori Valliano: materials for a biography. The last season. Article four. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2025. No. 2. Pp. 5–15.
