Praskovia Kovalyova-Zhemchugova

Soon thereafter she was taken from her family to serve as a chambermaid to Princess Martha Dolgorukaya, a relative of her master, Count Pyotr Sheremetev, who lived in the manor house.

When it was discovered that she had a fine voice, Praskovia, like other serfs who became artists, was trained to be a singer in the opera company then being put together by Count Pyotr and his son, Nikolai Sheremetev.

She debuted in 1779 on the stage of the serf theatre at Kuskovo in the role of the servant Gubert in the comic opera L'Amitié à l'épreuve by André Grétry.

By the age of 17, she could read and write French] and Italian fluently, played the harp and clavichord, and was acknowledged by her contemporaries for her operatic and dramatic abilities.

[2] Nikolai was the impresario of the family serf theater, and he had helped train Praskovia over the years, eventually falling seriously in love with the young star of the troupe.

It was taboo for an aristocrat like Sheremetev to move about in society with a serf as his social equal, and marriage, especially for a man from the highest noble family, was theoretically out of the question.

As part of the arrangements, Nikolai had created a phony genealogy for Praskovia claiming that she was the long-lost descendant of a Polish nobleman by the name of Kovalevsky.

Nikolai's two nephews, the Razumovsky brothers, had planned to inherit their uncle's vast fortune, and upon hearing that they were to lose it all to the son of a serf they contemplated murdering the infant.

[2] In memory of Praskovia, Nikolai built in Moscow on Sukharevskaya square, a large almshouse that tended to the sick, poor, and orphaned up until the revolution of 1917.

And still, this public criticism of his choice was really playing on the young count's nerves who realised all too clear that the society would never forgive him if he ever married the commoner girl.

[4]The plaque on Praskovia's grave reads-- This plain marble, unfeeling and impermanent, Hides the priceless remains of a wife and mother.

Yet her death was the path to immortality, Her innocent spirit is now in God's embrace, Robed in the radiant cloak of imperishability, And forever surrounded by the faces of angels.