Andreas Roller

Andreas Leonhard Roller (Russian: Андреас Леонгард Роллер, also known as "Андрей Адамович Роллер"; 8 January 1805, Regensburg – 20 June 1891, St. Petersburg) was a German-born Russian landscape painter and theatrical set designer, who served as a Professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts.

[1] In 1833, he was invited to St. Petersburg to become a decorator and Chief Engineer for the Imperial Theatres: a position he held until 1879, when illness forced him to resign.

During those years, he designed some of the most significant productions in his adopted country, including the premier of A Life for the Tsar, by Mikhail Glinka, one of the first Russian operas, at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre.

His technical contributions included the introduction of moving scenery and the so-called "ruin effect", where the stage set appears to collapse.

He also painted curtains and created a panorama of the city of Palermo that was displayed near the Mikhailovsky Manezh, but was destroyed by fire a mere two years later, in 1852.