Maria Sadovska’s 36 brief moments

Although Maria Sadovska lived for only 36 years, the gallery of the actress’s stage roles is an immense contribution to the treasury of Ukraine’s theatrical culture. In the years that she devoted to the stage, Sadovska played almost every female role that existed in the theater repertoire of the 1870s and 1880s. She always knew how to be original and find new colors for her characters. She sought to expose, as deeply as possible, the most essential features of each of her heroines.

When I was looking through the mountains of material on Sadovska’s work, I came across only one well-known photograph of her, in contrast to other Ukrainian theater actors who were photographed numerous times both on and off stage. Can the lack of photographs be explained by Sadovska’s modesty and unwillingness to pose for photographers? What was she really like? Her brother Panas Saksahansky reminisced, “Sadovska was an extremely serious person, a wonderful singer and actress, who was dubbed the ‘Ukrainian nightingale.’”

Maria Sadovska was born in April 1855 in the village of Kostovate, Kherson gubernia, into the illustrious Tobilevych family. The future actress’s brothers — Ivan Karpenko-Kary, Panas Saksahansky, and Mykola Sadovsky exerted a powerful influence on her upbringing and artistic tastes. In Yelysavethrad (now Kirovohrad), where the family had moved, Maria was the life and soul of her high school drama society. She performed in amateur productions of Russian plays and Ukrainian operettas, made props, and sewed costumes.

In the mid-1870s Yelysavethrad became the cradle of the Ukrainian national theater and its many luminaries. Ivan Tobilevych established an amateur company that staged successful productions of plays by Ostrovsky, Kotliarevsky, and Kvitka-Osnovianenko. In 1876 Yelysavethrad witnessed the arrival of Marko Kropyvnytsky, who tried to reorganize the amateur society into a professional Ukrainian drama company. In the spring of the same year, Kropyvnytsky formed an operetta company that Sadovska joined against her parents’ objections. For nearly three years she performed in this company as well as in a number of Russian operetta troupes.

The repertoire included the plays Nazar Stodolia, I Am Going beyond the Neman, and Give the Heart Freedom and It Will Lead You into Slavery. At this time Maria met a young Italian musician and singer named Barilotti, who began to help her improve her musical skills. The acquaintance led to a short-lived marriage. With her two children Maria returned to her parents in Yelysavethrad and left the stage for some time. But in 1883 she went to Kharkiv and joined the Ukrainian troupe headed by Kropyvnytsky, where she began her devoted service to Ukrainian culture.

Sadovska received excellent acting training in Kropyvnytsky’s company. His shrewd direction and the realistic recreation of every role, even the most insignificant one, was a new step towards mastery. Sadovska’s talent blossomed, her acting became increasingly convincing and attractive, and her characters more full-blooded and interesting. The actress worked hard on every role, seeking out new and inimitable traits for her characters and researching language, makeup, and costumes.

Critics were not of one mind where Sadovska’s acting was concerned, but almost all of them stressed the idea that she was totally devoid of sentimentality or any other kind of emotional excess. Adherence to principles and seriousness were typical of her personality. According to Saksahansky, she had independent views, shunned gossip, and did her best to forestall a split in the company led by her younger brothers Mykola Sadovsky and Panas Saksahansky. But the company eventually split, and Sadovska joined Saksahansky’s troupe in 1890.

Sadovska won immense popularity first as a performer in operas, operettas, and comedies and then as a dramatic actress. She made her debut on the Ukrainian stage in the play Natalka Poltavka. This play and the role of Natalka were very dear to the actress. There was a kind of cult around this play in the Tobilevych family: everybody knew the songs and scenes, and the rhymed monologues were always used in everyday life. Endowed with a beautiful and luscious soprano voice and organically combining her singing with dramatic acting, Sadovska’s Natalka was unsurpassed.

Critics wrote favorable reviews of her Pronia in Mykhailo Starytsky’s play Chasing Two Hares, Uliana in Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s play Matchmaking at Honcharivka, Kharytyna in Karpenko-Kary’s play The Servant Girl, Prakseda in the drama The Hutsuls, and Oryshka in Kropyvnytsky’s They Made Fools of Themselves. One of Sadovska’s best roles was Sophia in Karpenko-Kary’s The Fortuneless Maiden. At first she played Varka in this production, but later realized that the tender, sincere, and dramatic character of Sophia was closer to her. The reviews said that Sadovska achieved her peak of mastery in this role.

The gifted actress and singer achieved considerable success in the opera Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube. This was a serious artistic victory for Sadovska. The troupe staged the first production of this opera in the spring of 1884, when it was on tour in Rostov. Sadovska played the role of Odarka. Always improving her acting, she revealed another of her talents in this production — for comedy.

One of the many reviews emphasizes Sadovska’s extremely refined artistic life and inexhaustible reserves of human warmth. The Lviv newspaper Zoria wrote in 1891, “Her acting conveyed deep and truthful feeling that was reinforced by her enchanting voice, which seems to strike a chord with the spectator, while the realism and simplicity of her acting, free of any affectation, sometimes turns the impression into a complete illusion.”

In a letter from Mykola Sadovsky to his brother Panas Saksahansky, he writes: “Everything was going well, but an unexpected grief and heavy loss befell us: our sister Marusia Sadovska-Barilotti was taken ill and died during Lent on March 23, 1891. It is hard to recall the past...Her grave is already overgrown with sage and rue, but she is still standing before me: tall, slender, with kind and expressive eyes. ‘Oh, I feel bad, my little brother,’ she says. ‘What can I do for you, my darling?’ ‘I feel cold, very cold. I wish the play would end.’ The play The Fortuneless Maiden was being performed. I ran to hurry up the stage workers. The third bell rang and Act Five began. She is standing, pale as a lily, grasping at the door-post. Then she left.

“I cannot possibly convey the tone, the endless sadness that permeated each of her words. ‘Good Lord, I am going mad! Oh, my poor heart, stop beating in my chest, stop beating forever, so that I don’t live to see what you are prophesying,’ Marusia whispers, playing the role of Sophia. Then I feel chills going down my spine. There was something supernatural in this whisper. ‘Oh, don’t beat me, don’t kill me, just live with your Varka,’ Sophia says from the depths of her soul. The actress rallies all her strength, she is shivering dreadfully. I can hear the last cry of a person who is freezing to death, ‘Ai,’ and the actress ends her role and her artistic career.

“I carried her unconscious from the stage to the dressing room and then took her home. The fortuneless Sophia was the last role of our sister Marusia. She appeared on the stage in bloom, and in bloom she died. We buried her in Yelysavethrad’s Bykovske Cemetery next to mother whom she loved so much.

‘How long ago did we hear you in your house? And now we see you in your coffin...The nightingale has stopped singing, and Mother Ukraine will never hear her while the sun shines.’ That was how Kost Tyshkivsky began his speech, which was interrupted by the loud weeping of the family and friends who loved Sadovska-Barilotti, this quiet, amiable, and tender person.”