In tandem with Stanislavski, Sanin also co-directed Tsar Ioannovich, along with several other productions with the fledgling company, including The Sunken Bell by Gerhart Hauptmann (1898), The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1898), Men Above the Law by Alexey Pisemsky (1898), The Death of Ivan the Terrible by A.K.

[1][4] In 1902, he married Lika Mizinova, a woman with whom Anton Chekhov had once been romantically involved and who served as a prototype for Nina Zarechnaya in The Seagull.

[5] That same year, following a disagreement with Stanislavski over the re-organization of the company (which had also prompted the departure of Vsevolod Meyerhold), Sanin moved to the Alexandrinsky Theatre.

[6] He directed a number of plays by Alexander Ostrovsky with the Alexandrinsky, including The False Dmitry and Vasily Shuysky, An Ardent Heart and Stay in Your Own Sled.

During this period he produced several plays and operas both for the Bolshoy (Pskovityanka by Rimsky-Korsakov, Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin, 1917; Georges Bizet's Carmen, 1922) and Maly Theatres (Posadnik by A.K.