In the end of the 1890s Savoyarov moved to Saint Petersburg, started working as a violinist in a private opera house, and then in the Palace Theatre.

Savoyarov made his début on stage as an operetta tenor comedian by chance substituting for an ill actor.

Since 1905 he was seen playing in musical single-show companies (so called "capellas"), Russian, Ukrainian, Gipsy or pseudo-French ones which were in fashion and brought profit.

His repertoire included mostly songs and trolls accompanied by piano, violin, dancing, pantomime and eccentric acting often turned into brazen antics and buffoonery.

[3] It's significant that his style of acting coincides with his last name Savoyarov that comes from French word savoyard which means a strolling musician, a troubadour from Savoy.

Performing as "French-russian duet" they had a repertoire that consisted of comic and satiric scenes including singing, dancing, disguise and impersonations using theatrical costumes, make-up, mise-en-scènes and even decorations.

Savoyarov's favorite character is a flâneur of high society, dandy, petty bourgeois, low dives frequenter with a rumpled or well-pressed dress coat and a top hat or a bowler on, a cane in a hand and a chrysanthemum in his buttonhole.

There were times when his limited popularity as a satirist and humourist was a burden to Savoyarov who was trying to break through genre barrier of high poetry with such works as the dramatic melodeclamation titled Glory to Russian woman (of military-patriotic character) or the dramatic scene The Aviator’s death which however didn’t have much success.

During wartime, Savoyarov met Aleksandr Blok who attended his concerts in cinemas and café chantant a dozen times in 1914–1918.

[1] Here’s one of his notes on this subject that Blok wrote in his journals: "...Liuba finally saw Savoyarov who plays on tour in miniature close to us.

A big woman with massive arms bare almost to her shoulders was rushing about on the stage dramatically shouting and gesticulating, sitting down and jumping up again.

Apparently Blok believed The Twelve poem should be recited in this specific rough and eccentric manner, the way Savoyarov did it playing the role of a criminal from St. Petersburg.

Specially for the famous guest of his concerts he wrote a few mock verses imitating ‘with delicate irony’ Blok’s most popular lines or intonation (for example: "A night.

The political situation in the country stood stock-still, socialist associations of creative professions were formed and it became impossible to organize concerts independently.

In the 1910s, Mikhail Savoyarov, having received the title of “king of eccentricity” and the nickname “vomiting chansonnier,” also declared himself the only heir to French fumism on Russian soil.

As a teenager, having experienced the influence of some Parisian fumists and the Russian obscene poet Pyotr Schumacher [ru], who was ″the first to sing the praises of shit″, in the 1890s, Savoyarov later, as a tribute of respect and gratitude, called his “unbridled” concerts “smoky fonforisms” or “fanfaronnades”.

In the 1910s both success and influence follow the ‘music concerts’ of Igor Severyanin as well as poetry accompanied by Mikhail Kuzmin.

[10] Shklovsky talked about Savoyarov's songs in ‘ragged genre’ performing which he would go on stage dressed and painted as a criminal.

George Balanchine, a choreographer, forever memorized Savoyarov singing thieves songs: "Alyosha, sha!

– take a half-tone lower, stop telling lies"...[9] Such criminal atmosphere in The Twelve poem pervades Petrograd, a frightful city of the snowy winter of 1918.

Savoyarov's easy manner of singing, gesticulating, constantly moving around the stage and playing the violin had a profound effect.

Nowadays hardly anybody remembers that in 1930s Raikin started not as a reciter and satirist but as a musical eccentric and a dancer mime and that his first fame and the title of laureate of the all-USSR variety actors competition came to him thanks to his dance and mimic numbers Chaplin and Mishka.

His school of eccentric can be distinguished in Andrei Mironov, Menaker's son's, manner of performing and in musical parts of young Konstantin Raikin.