Michael Maddox

Michael Maddox (Russian: Михаил Егорович Маддокс, romanized: Mikhail Yegorovich Maddoks; 1747–1822) was an English entrepreneur and theatre manager active in Russia. He was co-founder, with Prince Urusov, of the Petrovsky Theatre, the first permanent opera theatre in Moscow and predecessor of the Bolshoi Theatre.

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. Leaving Russia he travelled to Madrid with his museum, and spent time in London in the ensuing decade. 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. There exists a possibility of confusion between the two with regard to references to equilibrium.

However, an anecdote, submitted by one C. J. Harford, of Stapleton, Bristol, originally published in Felix Farley's "Bristol Journal", and widely repeated in the English press in the 1820s, talks of Harford having encountered a man named Maddox in Moscow in 1786. That tale claimed that this "Mr Maddox" was the sole survivor of the sinking of a packet off Holyhead in 1757 [sic - the correct date is 1758] that had claimed the lives of "the famous Tom [sic] Maddox, the rope dancer" and the rest of his family, and that Maddox had subsequently been brought up by his uncle "Seward", trumpeter of Bristol. This uncle would almost certainly be Samuel Seward (c.1737-1810), who was later owner of the New Sadler's Wells Theatre in Cheltenham, and who was still calling himself a trumpeter, of Bristol, when he wrote his will in 1799. This anecdote seems to support the idea that Michael Maddox was related to (and possibly the son of) Anthony ("Tom"?) Maddox.

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 had had an established record of success at the Haymarket Theatre, London, where it is said that in 1770 his were the most prosperous entertainments ever carried on in that house. His profits in one season are stated to have amounted to £11,000, £2,500 more than David Garrick's a few years earlier.

Urusov had been granted a ten-year licence for theatrical and other performances. For four years they enjoyed success in a wooden theatre at Znamenka Street, the Znamensky Theatre, before it burnt down in early 1780. 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. It thus became known as the Petrovsky Theatre. The theatre had four storeys of boxes and two spacious galleries. The pit had two series of benches, with enclosed seats at the sides. The sumptuously decorated boxes were available to let at from three hundred to a thousand roubles and upwards. Admittance to the pit was one rouble.

Maddox obtained a further ten-year licence from Moscow's governor, Vasily Dolgorukov-Krymsky, but financial difficulties meant that ownership of the theatre passed to the Office of Imperial Theatres in 1792. Empress Maria Feodorovna granted Maddox a life-long pension of 3,000 roubles for his contribution to the creation of Moscow theatre. The theatre was operational until 1805, when it burned down just before a performance of Ferdinand Kauer's Dneprovskaya Rusalka. It was replaced by the Bolshoi Theatre on the same site.

a. Petrovsky Theatre, including the extension which contained a rotunda.

b. Interior of Rotunda/Masquerade hall. c. Interior of Theatre/Opera house