Born into a Tambov-based noble family, Koreneva moved to Moscow aged 16 and enrolled into the MAT Drama school in 1904 which she graduated from in 1907 to join the Stanislavski-led troupe.

[1] Her first roles included Ksenya in Boris Godunov (1907), Water in The Blue Bird and Marya Antonovna in Revizor (both 1908), but her breakthrough came on 9 September 1909 when Turgenev's A Month in the Country premiered, and Koreneva's performance as Verochka was lauded by, among many others, Maria Yermolova.

[3] Next season the part of Lise in The Karamazov Brothers endorsed Koreneva as the star of the Moscow theatre and the most popular young actress in MAT.

[5] Koreneva's highly charged, poetic and exalted stage persona proved to be very akin to her real life character, according to theatre historian Inna Solovyova.

Mikhail Bulgakov portrayed her sarcastically as the hysterical Lyudmila Silvestrovna Pryakhina in his Theatrical Novel, although several critics warned against taking this caricature at face value.