In the 17thcentury, only Moscow's elite had access to the magical, vibrant world of the theater.

In Russia's Theatrical Past, Claudia Jensen, Ingrid Maier, Stepan Shamin, and Daniel C. Waugh mine Russian and Western archival sources to document the history of these productions as they developed at the court of the Russian tsar. Using such sources as European newspapers, diplomats' reports, foreign travel accounts, witness accounts, and payment records, they also uncover unique aspects of local culture and politics of the time. Focusing on Northern European theatrical traditions, the authors explore the concept of intertheater, which describes transmissions between performing traditions, and reveal how the Muscovite court's interest in theater and other musical entertainment was strongly influenced by diplomatic contacts.

Russia's Theatrical Past, made possible by an international research collaborative, offers fresh insight into how and why Russians went to such great efforts to rapidly develop court theater in the 17th century.

Claudia Jensen is Affiliate Instructor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington. She is author ofMusical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia and editor (with Milo¨ Velimirovi) of Nikolai Findeizen's History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800, volumes 1 and 2. Ingrid Maier is Professor Emerita of Russian at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University. She has published several monographs on modern and historical Russian linguistics, Russian cultural history, and Russian translations of 17th-century newspapers, including editions of these translations (Vesti-Kuranty). Stepan Shamin is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences. He is author (in Russian) ofForeign "Pamphlets" and "Curiosities" in Russia from the 16th to the Beginning of the 18th Centuriesand Seventeenth-Century Kuranty. Daniel C. Waugh is Professor Emeritus of History, International Studies, and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington. He is author ofThe Great Turkes Defiance and (in Russian) ofHistory of a Book: Viatka and "Non-modernity" in Russian Culture in the Era of Peter the Great.

AcknowledgmentsA Note on Dates, Transliteration, and TranslationList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: The Comedians Come to Pskov1. Court Music at Home and Abroad2. The Theater of Diplomacy3. Introducing Pickleherring: The Origins of the Russian Court Theater4. The Plays and "Ballets" for the Tsar5. The Play of Tamerlane6. From Tamerlane to Tamerlane and BeyondBibliographyIndex