Described as a famous equilibrist, Michael Maddox arrived first in Russia in 1766 as the manager of a museum of 'mechanical and physical representations', visiting both St Petersburg and Moscow.
It is unclear whether he was related to Anthony Maddox, the successful slack-wire and theatre performer who drowned on a sea voyage to Dublin in 1758 along with Theophilus Cibber.
This uncle would almost certainly be Samuel Seward (c.1737-1810), who was later owner of the New Sadler's Wells Theatre in Cheltenham,[2] and who was still calling himself a trumpeter, of Bristol, when he wrote his will in 1799.
On returning to Russia before 1776, Michael Maddox was taken into partnership in the theatre company formed that year by the Moscow Prosecutor, Prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Urusov.
Maddox then raised enough credit to buy his share of the company from Prince Urusov and employ architect Christian Rosberg the same year to construct a new brick and stone building that faced Petrovka Street.
Empress Maria Feodorovna granted Maddox a life-long pension of 3,000 roubles for his contribution to the creation of Moscow theatre.
These included more than 100 different operas, mainly of the comic opera/opéra comique type by composers such as Grétry, Dalayrac, Mehul, Paisiello, Philidor and Martin y Soler, as well as Russians such as Yevstigney Fomin and Vasily Pashkevich.
William Tooke in the chapter "Sketch of Mosco" (sic) from his History of Russia describes the audience in the pit of the theatre as "perhaps, in many respects, one of the most polite that can be anywhere seen.
The ears are never rent with those noisy marks of disapprobation, which do not correct bad actors, and which distress and overpower the inexperienced and timid.
"[4] From 1783, Maddox also created and ran a Vauxhall Gardens enterprise concurrently in the Moscow suburbs, where operas and plays were performed from mid-May to September.
The suggestions that he was a Professor of Mathematics from Oxford University and that he had tutored the Tsarevich Pavel prior to moving to Moscow have not been substantiated.