60 Facts About Alexander Ostrovsky

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born on 12 April 1823, in the Zamoskvorechye region of Moscow, to Nikolai Fyodorovich Ostrovsky, a lawyer who had received a seminary education.

Later Nikolai Alexander Ostrovsky became a high-ranking state official and as such in 1839 received a title of nobility with corresponding privileges.

Alexander Ostrovsky had three siblings, sister Natalya, and brothers Mikhail and Sergey.

Alexander Ostrovsky insisted that the fairy-tales she told him inspired one of his most popular plays, The Snow Maiden.

Alexander Ostrovsky rearranged the patriarchal ways of the Zamoskvorechye house, making it look more like a European mansion, and made sure that her stepchildren would receive high-quality education.

Alexander Ostrovsky knew several European languages, played the piano and taught Alexander to read music.

In 1840 Alexander Ostrovsky graduated from the First Moscow Gymnasium and enrolled at Moscow University to study law.

In May 1843 Alexander Ostrovsky failed the Roman Law exams and left the university to join the Moscow Court of Consciousness as a clerk.

In 1851 Alexander Ostrovsky made a decision to devote himself entirely to literature and theatre.

Alexander Ostrovsky regarded it as his first original work and the starting point of his literary career.

On 14 February 1847 Alexander Ostrovsky made his public debut in the house of the university professor and literary critic Stepan Shevyryov, with the readings from "The Pictures".

The so-called "Alexander Ostrovsky circle" united many of his non-literary friends too, among them actor Prov Sadovsky, musician and folklorist Terty Filippov, merchant Ivan Shanin, shoe-maker Sergey Volkov, teacher Dyakov and Ioasaf Zheleznov, a Cossack from the Urals, all attracted by the idea of Russian national revival.

Alexander Ostrovsky found solace in work for Moskvityanin and made a debut there as a critic, providing a positive review of The Muff by Aleksey Pisemsky.

Censors gave their permission only after six months, but mangled the text in such a way that Alexander Ostrovsky lost all interest and asked the Maly inspector Alexey Verstovsky to forget about it and wait for the publication of the next play which he'd been working on already.

Alexander Ostrovsky, though, had to leave the capital before the play's premiere upon receiving the news of his father's serious illness.

Alexander Ostrovsky's rise to fame in both major cities was quick, but a serious opposition has already formed, notably among the Moscow actors, including Mikhail Shchepkin, Dmitry Lensky, Sergey Shumsky and Ivan Samarin.

Alexander Ostrovsky shifted still closer to the Slavophile doctrine with his next play, Don't Live as You Like, portraying the Maslenitsa pagan folk carnival, as celebrated in the 18th century Moscow.

In December 1855 he finished Hangover at Somebody Else's Feast featuring a noble old teacher Ivanov as the main character and Tit Titych, a boorish type of a family dictator for whom Alexander Ostrovsky coined the term 'samodur' which caught on instantly.

Nekrasov talked Alexander Ostrovsky into signing a four-year contract and published his first play The Pictures of Family Happiness, under the new title The Family Picture, as it has become known since.

Alexander Ostrovsky travelled from the Volga River's beginnings down to Nizhny Novgorod and, apart from collecting the information requested, compiled a dictionary of local terms concerning navigation, shipbuilding and fishery.

In May 1856, as the allegations of plagiarism have been made against him in both major cities, based upon his ex-co-author Gorev's accusations, Alexander Ostrovsky had to provide his own account of the history of the Family Affair for Moskovsky Vestnik and Sovremennik.

Alexander Ostrovsky spent two months in bed with a broken leg and had to return home for further treatment.

Alexander Ostrovsky himself saw his duty as merely portraying a Russian man the way he saw him.

Alexander Ostrovsky was greatly upset by the moral climate in both major Imperial theatres which seemed to bring out the worst in their actors.

In 1861 Alexander Ostrovsky finished Whatever You Look for, You'll Find, the final part of the Balzaminov trilogy, and the historical drama in verse, Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk, which took him six years to write.

In 1862 the Tsar showed his approval by presenting the author with a golden ring which rather upset Alexander Ostrovsky, who saw it as a scant reward for all the pains he had to go through with censors.

In 1865, accompanied again by Ivan Gorbunov, Alexander Ostrovsky made another trip down the Volga River.

Tsar Alexander Ostrovsky II was an avid theatre-goer, but favoured ballet and French vaudeville.

In 1867 Stepan Gedeonov became the director of Imperial Theatres and in just six weeks Alexander Ostrovsky wrote Vasilisa Melentyeva, using Gedeonov's script.

Alexander Ostrovsky built a creamery, set up a garden, and even though soon it became clear that this new way of life won't make him any richer, it was here that Ostrovsky spent his happiest days, receiving guests and enjoying bouts of inspiration for new plays.

Alexander Ostrovsky called Shchelykovo "the Kostroma Switzerland" and insisted that not even in Italy had he ever seen such beauty.

Alexander Ostrovsky was warmly welcomed in and debuted there in November 1868 with Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man.

The lack of finance forced Alexander Ostrovsky to cancel the project, but the idea was revived in Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, a pamphlet written in contemporary language but set in Moscow of the old times.

Alexander Ostrovsky himself was very impractical, even if he liked to pretend otherwise.

Now visiting Petersburg regularly, Alexander Ostrovsky was enjoying the parties Nekrasov staged in a fashion of Sovremennik happenings, but for all the thrills of meeting people like Gleb Uspensky and Nikolai Mikhailovsky, in the capital he felt uneasy.

Gedeonov's efforts to make sure that Alexander Ostrovsky should be granted a personal pension, in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of his literary career, came to nothing.

Disappointed, Alexander Ostrovsky returned to Moscow where he had always been revered as a veteran dramatist and the head of the Russian Dramatists society.

Alexander Ostrovsky saw the story of this woman as an unusual mix of extraordinary personal ambitions and religious hypocrisy of somebody he described as 'the Russian Tartuffe in frock.

Alexander Ostrovsky discovered several new dramatists, among them Nikolai Solovyov, a monk and a gifted playwright who became the co-author of Belugin's Marriage and two more plays.

Alexander Ostrovsky spent now most of his time in his room writing, feeling under increasing pressure due to growing financial demands of his family.

In 1874 Alexander Ostrovsky co-founded The Society of Russian Dramatic Art and Opera Composers which dealt mostly with legal issues and provided financial support for the authors writing for theatre.

Appalled by the deep crisis the Russian theatre found itself in the 1870s, Alexander Ostrovsky worked out a profound plan for its radical reform.

In December 1885, Alexander Ostrovsky was appointed the Imperial Theatres' repertoire director.

Alexander Ostrovsky was helping new authors, firing inadequate officials and trying to fight the all-pervading corruption.

Alexander Ostrovsky's feelings were mixed, though: 3 thousand rubles a year was not a large sum and there was a tinge of humiliation too in the way it had been obtained.

On 28 May 1886, Alexander Ostrovsky departed to Schelykovo, feeling already very ill.

Alexander Ostrovsky's condition started to quickly deteriorate; he spent his last days in great pain, unable to move.

Alexander Ostrovsky was buried in the local cemetery in Nikolo-Berezhki.

In 1847 Alexander Ostrovsky met Agafya Ivanovna, a lower middle-class 24-year-old woman who lived in the Yauza neighborhood, and became close to her.

The most notable Russian opera based on an Alexander Ostrovsky play is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden.

Alexander Ostrovsky is known outside of Russian-speaking countries mostly because of these two works.

Alexander Ostrovsky is considered one of the most important Russian playwrights of the 19th century, credited with bringing dramatic realism to the Russian theatre stage.

Alexander Ostrovsky's best-known plays, in which he meticulously portrayed the Russian society of his time, focusing on the morals and manners of the newly emerging merchant class, were extremely popular during his lifetime and remain an integral part of the Russian repertoire.

Alexander Ostrovsky's work divided the critics, and while Apollon Grigoriev enthused about their originality and Nikolai Dobrolyubov praised their social straightforwardness, some criticised the author of being maudlin and sentimental as regards patriarchal habits and ways.

Some scholars expressed doubts as to the existence of the actual piece of paper on which Nikolai Gogol has allegedly scribbled the words of encouragement to the young dramatist, but in retrospect most of them agreed that regardless of that Alexander Ostrovsky came as a direct heir to Gogol's tradition of realism, humanism and closeness to folk culture and language.

Alexander Ostrovsky was foreign to pastel colours and undertones, subtlety was not his thing.

Alexander Ostrovsky's was juiciness of natural brightness, dramatism, strong emotions, bright humour and unforgettable, lavishly painted characters.

Alexander Ostrovsky never kept diaries, discussed only practical affairs in his letters and never meant them to be preserved.

Unlike those of his contemporaries Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev, Alexander Ostrovsky's works are little known outside of Russian-speaking countries.

The Alexander Ostrovsky Institute was founded in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1945, which grew into the Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture.