Fedor Fedorovskii

Born Dec. 14 (26), 1883, in Chernigov; died Sept. 7, 1955, in Moscow. Soviet stage designer. People’s Artist of the USSR (1951). Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947; vice-president, 1947–53).

Fedorovskii studied at the Stroganov Central Industrial Arts School in Moscow from 1902 to 1907. In 1913 and 1914 he designed sets for S. P. Diaghilev in Paris and London. He was head of the stage design department and later principal designer at the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR in Moscow from 1927 to 1929 and from 1947 to 1953.

Fedorovskii, who designed solely for the musical theater, was attracted to heroic and epic themes and exciting, dynamic color schemes. Among the operas staged at the Bolshoi Theater with his designs are Borodin’s Prince Igor (1934; State Prize of the USSR, 1941), Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1948; State Prize of the USSR, 1949) and Khovanshchina (1950; State Prize of the USSR, 1951), and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko (1949; State Prize of the USSR, 1950). At the S. M. Kirov Theater of Opera and Ballet in Leningrad he designed the sets for Ivan Susanin by Glinka (1939) and Emel’ian Pugachev by M. Koval’ (1942; State Prize of the USSR, 1943).

Fedorovskii was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.