Video: How a couple of actors founded the most famous baths in Moscow: Sandunov Baths
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
For more than two hundred years, public baths have been operating in the center of Moscow. The story of their creation is similar to a love-detective novel: a young actress, a favorite of the public, and her lover could not be together, because the old count "laid eyes" on the rising star. If it were not for the intervention of the empress herself, Russia might have lost one of the brightest actresses and singers of the 18th century and the first luxurious bath complex in its history.
A wonderful story about a young pupil of a theater school and a gracious empress for a couple of centuries has become so overgrown with legends that it has become like a fairy tale. According to the most widespread version, the young singer first met Catherine II in person around 1790 after performing at the Hermitage Theater. The delighted empress summoned the girl to her box and talked to her affectionately. As a special favor, she "gave" Lisa a bright and sonorous surname - Uranova - in honor of the recently discovered planet.
The young actress was an orphan, so the participation of the empress herself in her fate was considered fabulous luck. So it really was. Another gift from the Empress was a diamond ring. Since then, Catherine has paid special attention to her "goddaughter", but this did not protect the future star from trouble. A little later, with the participation of this girl, and mostly on the stage of the Hermitage Theater, a real vaudeville was played. The middle-aged Count Bezborodko drew attention to Elizaveta Uranova. This statesman in those years ran the entire postal service and enjoyed tremendous influence.
The future star, in full accordance with the light genre of musical comedies, because she so fiercely resisted persistent courtship that she was head over heels in love. The actor Sila Sandunov became her chosen one. Coming from the Georgian nobility, he served for several years as an official and finally became an actor. The management of the theaters, in which the lovers, bribed by the count, played, did everything to separate the lovers, but this part of the story had a happy ending.
There was a premiere at the Hermitage Theater - they gave the opera Fedul with Children, the libretto for which was composed by Catherine II herself. Liza Uranova performed the role of Dunyasha so brilliantly that the audience gave a loud ovation. The Empress was pleased. However, at the end of the aria, the young performer "out of character" fell to her knees and turned to her highest patroness with a request to accept the petition. The artist described all the intrigues against her and Sandunov.
The empress dismissed the directors of the theaters Khrapovitsky and Soimonov, who indulged Bezborodko's claims, and blessed the lovers. Historians believe that perhaps this vivid and memorable escapade was carried out with the knowledge of Catherine herself. After this incident of "punishment of villains" and "victory of love", the image of a "good sovereign" was entrenched in her, which was important at that time. The case became widely known, and Pushkin included a similar episode in the novel "The Captain's Daughter".
Later, the Sandunovs moved to Moscow. Lisa still shone in the theater, and her husband became a director, but eventually became disillusioned with this occupation. Having sold the diamonds presented for the wedding by the empress, the couple acquired a plot of land along the Neglinnaya River. It was here that the famous complex was founded. In 1808, the Sandunov Baths received the first visitors and became a real sensation:
("Moscow and Muscovites")
However, it was the baths, apparently, that caused discord in the family. Several years later, the marriage, blessed by the Empress herself, fell apart. After the divorce, the baths remained in the ownership of Elizabeth Uranova, but retained their original name. Today, the oldest baths in the capital are recognized as an architectural and engineering miracle and are protected as a cultural heritage site. We can see the interiors of various parts of the famous complex in a dozen films: Eisenstein twice imitated sea and lake battles in a huge pool - while filming "Battleship Potemkin" and "Alexander Nevsky"; on New Year's Eve, the heroes of the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!" and there Yuri Kara filmed the scene of the ball for The Master and Margarita.
Baths can sometimes surprise scholars who study their history. For example, the ancient Roman baths found in Turkey were recently surprised
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