February 2, People’s Artist of Russia Vladimir Simonov debuted as a “Retired Hussar” during the Paris tour on the stage of MC93 theatre.

This role is among the most difficult ones in the performance and has been played by the Honored Artist of Russia Vladimir Vdovichenkov from the first-night of the production in February 2014. V. Vdovichenkov was awarded the Theatre Prize of the MK newspaper and “Star of a Theatre-goer” prize for his performing in “Eugene Onegin”.

Retired Hussar is a character invented by director of the performance Rimas Tuminas; this character carries an enormous meaning and semantic content in itself, communicating comments from the author to the audience. These author comments represent a large part of the novel in verse.

Playing five performances in a row is a serious challenge even for a high level actor. Therefore, a decision was taken to introduce one more for the role of Retired Hussar.

Vladimir Simonov is among the most outstanding Vakhtangov company actors. Not by mere chance Rimas Tuminas casts V. Simonov in almost all of his productions – Pandarus in “Troilus and Cressida”, Serebriakov in “Uncle Vanya” and Rene in “Wind in the Poplars”. In the new stage-version of a play “Lord, Smile at us” Vladimir is rehearsing one of the main parts.

We congratulate our colleague on a new role, wishing him further success in grasping the depths of Pushkin’s works.