Aleksandr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky

Aleksandr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky , 1823-86, Russian dramatist. Ostrovsky's first play, The Bankrupt (1847; reworked as It's a Family Affair, 1850), was widely read but was banned from the stage. He left a government clerical post in 1851 to devote his time to writing. Most of his more than 50 plays deal with the merchant or petty-official classes and the conflicts within their patriarchal families. All but eight of his works were written in blank verse, using colloquial language. Ostrovsky's masterpiece is The Storm (1860), the tragedy of a woman driven to suicide. The play is the basis for Janáček's opera Katia Kabanova. Ostrovsky's popular play Poverty Is No Crime (1854) concerns a marriage of convenience. Rimsky-Korsakov used his Snow Maiden (1873) as the libretto of an opera and Tchaikovsky drew upon several plays by Ostrovsky as inspiration for musical works.

Ostrovsky, Alexsandr Nikolayevich (1823–86) Russian dramatist. He is an important figure in 20th-century Russian theatrical realism. Many of his plays deal with the life of the Russian merchant class. His plays include Poverty is no Crime (1854) and The Thunderstorm (1859).

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolayevich (1823–86), Russian dramatist, many of whose numerous plays remain in the Soviet repertory. He first attracted attention with The Bankrupt (1849), a study of corruption in the Moscow merchant class which cost him his job as a civil servant and condemned him to a life of constant struggle and near poverty. Banned from the stage for 13 years, it circulated freely in manuscript and was eventually staged as It's All in the Family. It was followed by a number of historical plays, a fairy-tale play, The Snow Maiden (1873), which provided the basis for an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, and the series of realistic contemporary satires for which Ostrovsky is best known. He is difficult to translate into English, owing to the richness of his language and his use of local colour, but three of his satires—Even a Wise Man Stumbles (1868), also known as Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man; Easy Money (1870), based on The Taming of the Shrew; and Wolves and Sheep (1875)—were published in 1944 in translation. Another satire, The Forest (1871), about two strolling players in provincial Russia, was given its British première by the RSC in 1981, with Alan Howard. Of the plays dealing with the position of women in Russian society which he wrote in his later years the best is usually acknowledged to be The Poor (or Dowerless) Bride (1879). Outside Russia his best-known play is a domestic tragedy, The Storm (1860). It was first seen in translation in New York in 1900, and in London in 1929, and provided the plot of Janáček's opera Kátya Kabanová. Most of Ostrovsky's plays were first produced at the Maly Theatre, Moscow, sometimes known as the House of Ostrovsky, where he found a friend and ideal interpreter in the actor Prov Sadovsky. He was deeply concerned with the position of Russian actors, and served as President of the Society of Russian Dramatists and Operatic Composers from its foundation in 1870 until his death.