Ruska Besida

Rus’ka Besida 

a Ukrainian traveling theater of music and drama. It was organized in 1864 as part of the Rus’ka Besida association in L’vov and toured the cities and villages of Galicia and Bucovina. An important factor in the success of the theater’s activities was the contribution, in various years, of such actors as T. F. Romanovich, I. V. Biberovich, M. L. Kropivnitskii, M. K. Zan’kovetskaia, N. K. Sadovskii, and I. D. Stadnik.

The repertoire consisted of plays by the Ukrainian dramatists M. L. Kropivnitskii, I. K. Karpenko-Karyi, M. P. Staritskii, G. F. Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko, and I. P. Kotliarevskii and works by N. V. Gogol, A. N. Ostrovskii, A. V. Sukhovo Kobylin, A. P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, and H. Ibsen. Operas by N. V. Lysenko, N. N. Arkas, D. V. Sichinskii, P. I. Tchaikovsky, S. Moniushko, B. Smetana, G. Puccini, G. Verdi, and G. Bizet were also staged. Members of the company included F. N. Lopatinskaia, I. D. Rubchak, E. A. Rubchakova, V. M. Iurchak, S. Stadnikova, A. M. Buchma, and L. Kurbas. The theater functioned under various names until 1924.

REFERENCE

Charnets’kyi, S. “Narys istorii ukrains’koho teatru v Galychyni.” In his book Vybrane. L’vov, 1959.