Konstantin Varlamov


Konstantin Alexandrovich Varlamov was a Russian stage actor associated with the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Konstantin Varlamov was born in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia, to the composer Alexander Varlamov. In the course of his thirty-year career with the Alexandrinsky Theatre, he played more than one thousand parts ; among his best-remembered roles were Varravin, Yaichnitsa, Lyapkin-Tyapkin and Chichikov , all by Nikolai Gogol; Bolshov, Yusov, Rusakov, Krutitsky and Kuroslepov, all by Alexander Ostrovsky; Lebedev by Anton Chekhov; and Skalozub by Alexander Griboyedov.
Varlamov, who regularly staged popular 'kapustniks' in his own home, was considered the heir to Yakov Shumsky and Vasily Zhivokini, and was a cult figure in his native city, where special trademark Dyadya Kostya cigarettes were produced at one time in his honour.
In 1896 he was honored with the medal for Meritorious Artist of the Imperial Theaters. Konstantin Varlamov died in Petrograd, Imperial Russia, on 15 August 1915 and is interred in Novodevichy Cemetery.