The Museum House of Maria Zankovetska (the Museum, for short) was opened in 1960 on the first floor of a small building No. 121 in Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya Street where the famous Ukraine actress lived for her last years.
The Museum exposition consists of a collection previously belonging to the State Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema Arts of Ukraine. It comprises documents, playbills, photographs, stage costumes personally donated by Maria Zankovetska in 1923. Unfortunately, the building went up in flames. However, thanks to dedicated Museum staff the unique exhibits were rescued. Later, the house was demolished. In 1982, the Museum reconstruction was started. And in 1989, the Museum House of Maria Zankovetska reappeared in the reconstructed building. It was constructed strictly according to a plan of the burned estate. The Museum had an exposition devoted to the life and creative work of the actress, her memorial flat and theatre drawing room.
The drama of the exposition is developed through several theatre and everyday collages of the interior made of the Museum exhibits.
The first exposition represents modest furniture of two provincial cultured people of the mid 19th century, Kostantin and Maria Adasovskies. On 23rd July, 1854, their daughter Maria was born in the village of Zanki. The future actress spent her childhood and youth in Chernihiv Region of Ukraine where her spirituality and talent sprouted.
Then fate brought Maria to the fortress of Bender where her husband Alexey Khlistov did his military service. There she met Lieutenant Nikolay Tobilevich, the future actor Nikolay Sadovsky, for the first time. It was he who amazed by her talent invited Maria to appear on the professional scene.
The actress made her debut in Elisavetgrad (later Kirovograd) on 27th October, 1882. The next exposition is devoted to the first roles of her. A portrait of Zankovetska with Ukrainian landscape in the background, the role of Kharitina in The Hireling film (Наймичка) directed by Ivan Karpenko-Kariy, attracts much attention. Also compositions of original film scenes with Znakovetska starring are recreated there (Alena and Oksana in The World-eater or Spider (Глитай, або ж павук), While the Sun is Getting Up (Доки сонце зійде) directed by Mikhail Kropivnitsky, Kharitina in The Hireling (Наймичка)). All these as well as several photo sketches of her published in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin show her as a real expert of scene.
In the next room illumination of a theatre comes to life through its components, a scene and a makeup room. Visitors can find here a rich collection of Zankovetska's costumes and elements of scene decorations that underline a connection of the Ukraine scene with folk and ethnographic resources. The exposition begins the story with Petersburg tour of the theatre of leaders in 1886 to 1888 that made Zankovetska world popular. Anton Chekhov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ilya Repin and others admired her forever.
The final exposition opens up the main personality and character features of the prominent actress. She could appear together with the theatre youths supported by her prestige. The Guzul Theatre named after Ignat Khotkevich got Maria's jewellery. During the First World War, Maria Zankovetska worked in the hospital and nursed the wounded. The great Zankovetska had always acknowledged high ideals of love, kindness, fairness and practiced the same in the real life.
The second part of the Museum is the memorial flat. A study, drawing and dining rooms, and a kitchen are recreated there. This flat keeps memory of the last period of the actress's life from 1918 to 1934.
Maria Zankovetska moved to Kiev in 1918 and lived there till the end of her days. She settled down in a house in Bolshaya Vasilkovskay Street (Demeyevka, Kiev outskirts then) belonging to her relative Vladimir Karnaukhov. The wet and cold flat upstairs of this small house was always clean and full of flowers. Everybody knew that Zankovetska loved flowers. Flowers were everywhere in the flat — in vases, on flower-stands. Bunches of pressed wild flowers (especially loved by the actress) were pinned to embroideries and carpets. Once, after performance somebody gifted Maria a small flowerpot with a sprout of white lilac. The actress planted the sprout near the house and over the years it grew up into a wonderful lilac bush with sweet-scented bunches of flowers. Every Maria's guest left her house with a luxury bunch of lilac. It was a tradition.
The last days of her life Maria Zankovetska lived in this house. The great actress died on 4th October, 1934. She was buried at Baikove Cemetery.
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