Encanto

In 2024, we celebrate the 210th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, an outstanding Russian poet, prose writer, and playwright. The solo performance "The Tambov Treasurer’s Wife" by Sergey Matveev, Honored Artist of the Republic of Kazakhstan, People’s Artist of Kyrgyzstan, and recipient of the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation, is based on Lermontov’s eponymous work. The play narrates the provincial way of life, drawing from an anecdotal incident from the 19th century, where a Tambov treasurer lost his wife in a card game to a visiting uhlan.

The brilliant ease of storytelling, masterful alternations between the narrative of the incident and the author’s comments—sometimes humorous, sometimes serious—do not fully encapsulate the merits of this poetic tale. Lermontov skillfully captures the drama of everyday life, which corrodes moral foundations, devalues individuality, and reduces a person to an object.