THE CULTURAL AND EVERYDAY LANDSCAPE OF ROME AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN THE LETTERS OF O.P. WEISS TO M.A. BALAKIREV

Abstract

The article presents excerpts from letters from Olga Platonovna Weyss (nee Demidova), addressed to the famous Russian composer, active member of the “Mighty Handful” Mily Alekseevich Balakirev. These letters are kept in the Pushkin House in the M.A. Fund. Balakireva. O.P. Weyss at the time of the events described was a thirty-six-year-old woman, a widow, a teacher at the Moscow gymnasium S.N. Fisher, mother of daughter Sophia. She was a descendant of two famous families, the Demidovs and the Dalyas, and the granddaughter of the author of the famous “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” V.I. Dalya. The life of this woman has been well studied, she herself left the most interesting memories of her childhood and youth, and her service as head of the Yaroslavl School for Girls of the Clergy is also known. But the period from 1900 to 1906 still remained a “blank spot”. This article presents her previously unpublished letters from Rome, which contain a lot of interesting information about how church services were held there at the very beginning of the 20th century, how Italians celebrated holidays and much more. In addition, from these letters we learn that O.P. Weyss was an admirer of the composer’s talent, and also helped this elderly man with translations of business letters.