Solenik, Karp

Born May 1811 in Lepel’, in what is now Vitebsk Oblast, Byelorussian SSR; died Oct. 7 (19), 1851, in Kharkov. Ukrainian actor.

In 1831, Solenik became a prompter, and in 1832 an actor in the company of I. F. Shtein in Kharkov. In 1835 he joined L. Iu. Mlotkovskii’s company and later performed in theater groups in Kursk, Kishinev, Odessa, and other, primarily Ukrainian, cities. One of the founders of the Ukrainian realist theater of the first half of the 19th century, he also achieved fame as a witty comic actor. His work was highly acclaimed by M. S. Shchepkin, N. V. Gogol, and T. G. Shevchenko. Among Solenik’s best roles were Vybornyi and Voznyi in Kotliarevskii’s Natalka Poltavka, Chu-prun in Kotliarevskii’s The Magic Soldier, Shel’menko in Kvit-ka-Osnov’ianenko’s Shel’menko the Batman, Famusov in Gri-boedov’s Woe From Wit, Khlestakov in Gogol’s The Inspector-General, Sinichkin in Lenskii’s Lev Gurych Sinichkin, and the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear.