When you travel to a new place, one of the most beneficial ways to spend your time there is to roam around the museums and ancient sites. There are lots of advantages in visiting museums on your travel, such as learning about the history of that area, person, or article; you can also see some of the historical items; you can learn about the evolution of something; the museum that you visit might be an educational museum, which will help you to understand science or history better, and many other benefits that you’ll get from your time in museums.
There are multiple types of museums in the world, such as the art and cultural museums, the educational museums, the historical museums, museums of technology, museums of politics, and biographical museums. The biographical museums are a type of museum that is dedicated to a person or a group of people. These museums can show the articles about the life or career of those people or display the items and objects that those people gathered throughout their life or both of them at once. The biographical museums are mostly located in those people’s houses/apartments or sometimes a specific location that relates to those people.
Russia is a historic country with loads of historical places and museums, especially St. Petersburg, that has more than enough museums to offer to tourists and travelers. St. Petersburg is unofficially called the city of museums among the locals because of the number of museums in this city. Though there are more than hundred museums in this beautiful city, biographical museums don’t have a lot of representatives in the St. Petersburg tours; in fact, there’s only one museum dedicated to great composers of Russia in St. Petersburg as well as one drama artists memorial museum that you can visit on your travel to Russia.
The only drama artists' memorial museum in the city is dedicated to the gifted family of Samoilov. Though the Samoilov house had many talented persons in their family line, the museum is more dedicated to Vasily Vasilyevich Samoilov, the stage actor and son of Vasily Mikhailovich Samoilov and Sofia Samoilova. This family has greatly contributed to Russian art and theater; many people in this family were members of the top theater and opera companies of Russia, including Vasily Smoilov, who was a member of The Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Vasily Samoilov was born in 1813; after he graduated from the Forestry College in 1832, he was on to start a military profession, but since he had great vocal, by the approval of the emperor, his father advised him to join theater, which he did in 1834 as the leading part of Étienne Méhul's Joseph in Alexandrinsky Theatre. After three years of singing in operas, he has joined drama troupe and continued to shine in the Russian imperial theater. He was the indisputable star during his last ten years of activity on the stage of the Imperial Theatre. Among the notable works of him in that period, we can point out to King Lear and Hamlet by Shakespeare. Vasily Samoilov died in April of 1887 at the age of 74.
Vasily Samoilov had an apartment on the second floor of the number 8 on Stremyannaya Street, which in 1994 had turned to the Memorial Museum of Samoilov. The Samoilov Museum is a fifth branch of the State Museum of Theatre and Music and joined the list of small museums of St. Petersburg alongside the Chaliapin Memorial Museum and Rimsky-Korsakov Memorial Museum.
The Samoilov Apartment was turned to a communal house after the October Revolution, and in 1994, it was included in the building plans of the complex of a five-star hotel that was being built there at the time. The reconstruction team of the museum and the designers of the hotel had joined together to build an extraordinary character for the new museum and its excellent exhibitions.
Two halls inside the museum are fully dedicated to the Samoilov family. You can find portraits of the three generations of artistic people in the family; furniture and personal belongings of the family, and paintings that Vasily Samoilov painted himself. You can visit these halls and the fascinating items inside them on your travel to Russia, especially if you’re interested in theatre and opera, which makes the Samoilov Family Museum a must-see in your visit list of the tour to Russia.
The portrait hall tells the story of the artistic character of the family, the history of theatre during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and also exhibits the theatrical life of St. Petersburg, and items from the Alexanderinsky Theatre. There’s also a small concert hall in the museum, which recovers the artistic traditions of the house and family by holding music concerts and other relatable events. We recommend everyone, who enjoys theatre and opera a visit to this museum on their tour to Russia.
There’s also a hall fully dedicated to people and events of the Russian ballet from the beginning of the creation to the present day. St. Petersburg is the capital of Russian Ballet because it gives multiple world-class dancers, such as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and many others, which you can learn about all of them on your trip to St. Petersburg in this exhibition inside the Samoilov Family Museum. There you can find lots of articles that are belonged to those masters and artists.
Though this museum has everything you need to learn about the theatre, opera, and Russian ballet, it doesn’t include in the tour to Russia by default, and if you want to visit it on your travel to Russia, you need to inform your tour to St. Petersburg manager beforehand. We at the Star Travel Company also recommend our tourists and people who have decided to travel to Russia visit our weblog to find out more about the top Russia attractive places, best places to eat Russian Cuisine, best places to shop in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
