Vasily Samoylov
Vasily Vasilyevich Samoylov (January 25, 1813 – April 8, 1887) was a Russian stage actor tied to the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. He began as an opera singer and later became a celebrated dramatic actor. He also painted and kept self-portraits that form a visual autobiography of his life on stage.
Born into a family of performers, his father Vasily Samoylov and his mother Sofya Chernikova were opera singers. He studied at the Mining Engineering Corps from 1829 and then at the Forestry College in 1832. He almost joined the military, but his father encouraged him to try opera. He made his debut in 1834 at Alexandrinka, in the lead role of Méhul's Joseph.
Three years later he switched to drama and had a breakthrough in 1839 as Makar Gubkin in Fyodor Koni's The Death of Lyapunov. He played many important roles, including Prisypochka (Petersburg Flats), Almaviva (The Marriage of Figaro), Mitya (The Death of Lyapunov), Shvokhnev (The Gamblers), Chyuzhbinin (The Talisman), and The Old Man (Love and Friendship). His best-remembered part was Puzyrechkin in The Retired Theatre Musician and the Princess (1846), done as his benefit performance.
As Russian drama grew, he starred in plays by Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Potekhin, Pisemsky, Sukhovo-Kobylin, Boborykin and others. In his last ten years he was the leading star of the Imperial Theatre, with notable benefit performances of King Lear and Hamlet. He also created many stage self-portraits, reflecting his life as an actor.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 15:21 (CET).