Lyubov Nikulina Kositskaya

Biography

Kositskaya was born in Zhdanovka village nearby Nizhny Novgorod in the family of Russian serf peasants. "We were part of the household of a man whom people were calling the Dog. We, as children, were scared even by the sound of his name, for he was for us the embodiment of horror. I was born in his house which stood on land spilled with suffering peasants’ blood and tears," she wrote in her posthumously published memoirs. When the girl was nine, the family bought out their freedom. At the age of 14 Lyuba found work as a housemaid in Nizhny Novgorod. Her mistress, a merchant woman Dolganova was kind and generous, she's given her he ward girl status and provided her with teachers who taught her reading and writing. It was in Dolganova's house that Kositskaya debuted as an amateur actress, discovering she'd got a fine singing voice too.

In April 1844, against her mother's will, Kositskaya debuted in the Kositskaya joined the Nizhny Theater where she was engaged in roles of peasant girls and servant maids and also sang in operas by Weber and Verstovsky. With a view of becoming an opera star she came to Moscow but found herself first in drama school, then, through Mikhail Shchepkin's protection, in Maly Theatre. In Maly Kositskaya married actor Ivan Nikulin, who was her second husband. This marriage was not a happy one.

Kositskaya debuted on the Maly Theatre stage in 1847 and had an instant success. In her first season she played Parasha (Parasha the Syberian by Nikolai Polevoy), Luisa (Intrigue and Love by Friedrich Schiller), Ophelia (Hamlet by William Shakespeare), Mikaela (Daughter of Karl the Brave, by Vladimir Zotov). Critics praized her performances in melodramas, admitting her vaudevillian abilities were limited (due to a lack of technique). In the early 1850s she failed as Masha in Turgenev's The Bachelor (Schepkin's benefice) and people started talking openly of her decline.

Kositskaya's second birth on stage came with the emergence of Alexander Ostrovsky, whose 6th play (and the first to be permitted for production) Stay in Your Own Sled she chose for her benefice which implied a certain risk. In the role of Dunya Rusakova Kositskaya triumphed and since then appeared in many of the Ostrovsky plays staged at Maly Theatre. She reached the peak of her artistic career with the role of Katerina in The Storm (1859), setting a template for many of her followers in what is now regarded as a Russian theatre classic. By the time The Storm was written, Ostrovsky and Kositskaya have been intimately close. There is evidence that many of the tragedy's details have found their way into the plot from the actress' telling the author about her childhood and youth spent on the Volga banks.

In 1860s Kositskaya's credo changed, she shifted to more comic roles, although one of her best moments on stage was the role of Desdemona in Othello. Kositskaya's last role was that of Lizaveta in Aleksei Pisemsky's A Bitter Fate (1863). For two years Ostrovsky and Kositskaya were lovers; that was the time of uncertainty and anguish, especially for Agafia Ivanovna, the author's civil wife. Finally Ostrovsky proposed to Kositskaya and she rufused him, having fallen for a young merchant's son Sokolov, one of her ardent followers. The young lover first squandered his own money, then started taking money from her and finally left the actress. Shock and humiliation caused by this betrayal hastened her early demise.

Nikulina-Kositskaya died on September 17, 1868, in Moscow and was buried at the Vagankovo Cemetery. Ten years later her memoirs called Notes (Zapiski) were published by Russkaya Starina (1878, book XXI).