Nikolai Sheremetev

was a Russian count, the son of Petr Borisovich Sheremetev, notable grandee of the epoch of empresses Anna Ivanovna, Elizabeth Petrovna, and Catherine II.

In 1765 he played the role of the god Hymen in the mythological ballet Acis and Galathea, in which his childhood comrade, the future Paul I, had distinguished himself.

From a small private theatre of the count P. B. Sheremetev, it grew into a troupe capable of giving "an opera and allegorical ballets".

Because of the incurable illness of Zhemchugova, who was now his wife, the Count closed the theatre in Ostankino, and on November 6, 1801 he secretly married her, having first found in an archive the facts testifying to her "origin" from the Polish noble clan of Kovalev.

Sheremetev sent a letter to the tsar, informing him about his marriage with a woman "whose origin incontestably had a noble beginning" and about the birth of his son and heir.