Adelgeim, Robert Lvovich and Rafail Lvovich

Robert was born in 1860 and died Dec. 19, 1934; Rafail was born in 1861 and died Aug. 17, 1938. Russian actors, awarded People’s Artists of the RSFSR in 1931.

The Adel’geim brothers were born in Moscow. In 1888 they graduated from the dramatic division of the Vienna Conservatory, where they were taught by A. Sonnenthal and I. Levinskii. The brothers worked separately in theaters in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. After returning to their native land, they made their debuts—Rafail in Orel in 1894 and Robert in Zhitomir in 1895. They soon teamed up, beginning their joint creative life of some 40 years of acting and touring. Their basic contribution was accustoming viewers to the best works of world classical drama. Robert Adel’geim used the heroic manner of performance as Othello and Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet, Karl Moor in Schiller’s The Robbers, Oedipus in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Uriel Acosta in Uriel Acosta by Gutzkow, and other roles. Rafail Adel’geim introduced a nuance of characterization in his acting. His roles included lago, Shylock, Richard III, and Lear in Shakespeare’s Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, and King Lear.

The Adel’geims’ acting was characterized by declamation and rationality. However, it was their selection of roles and their careful polishing of them that determined the significance of their art in the development of theatrical culture in provincial prerevolutionary Russia.