Count Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Sheremetev ( – 18 May 1931) was a

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n composer, conductor and entrepreneur. He founded his own private symphony orchestra in 1882, and from 1898 organized public concerts in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

that involved the orchestra and a choir he had inherited from his father, Dmitri Sheremetev. He also founded the Musical Historical Society in 1910, which gave free lecture recitals involving his orchestra and choir. Sheremetev conducted the Russian premiere of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

Parsifal ''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is freely based on the 13th-century Middle High German chivalric romance ''Parzival'' of th ...

in a series of three concerts in 1906; his conducting on that occasion was described by the press as "primitive". This was followed by Sheremetev conducting the opera's first Russian staging on 21 December 1913 (according to the Russian Old Style calendar; 3 January 1914 according to the standard Western calendar), performed at the

Hermitage Theatre The Hermitage Theatre ( rus, Эрмитажный Театр, Èrmitážnyj Teátr, ɪrmʲɪˈtaʐnɨj tʲɪˈat(ə)r) in Saint Petersburg, Russia is one of five Hermitage Museum, Hermitage buildings lining the Palace Embankment of the Neva Ri ...

before the Imperial Family, the diplomatic corps, representative members of the State Duma and senior government officials. After two further performances there, the production transferred to the Theatre of Musical Drama. On 10 June 1883 Sheremetev married Marie Heyden (born 1863 in

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), daughter of

Governor-General of Finland The governor-general of Finland was the military commander and the highest administrator of Finland sporadically Finland under Swedish rule, under Swedish rule in the 17th and 18th centuries and continuously in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finl ...

count Frederick Heyden (1821–1900) and Elisabeth

Zubov The House of Zubov () was the Russian noble family, that rose to occupy some of the highest offices of state in the 1790s, when Platon Zubov became the last favorite of Empress Catherine the Great (). Members of the family were granted the tit ...

(1833–1894).Genealogy handbook of Baltic nobility
/ref> In 1917, Count Aleksandr and his wife fled to their estates in Finland and escaped the Red Terror. They lost all their possessions in Russia, sold their Finnish estates and moved to Belgium and then to Paris. After a while the money ran out and they lived in poverty, but helped somewhat by a charity. They both died in Paris in 1931 and were buried in the Russian cemetery there. Their son, Georgy, fought for the Whites, fled Russia and worked as secretary for Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich of Russia in France in the 1920s.

References

* ''Wagner & Russia'', Rosamund Bartlett. Cambridge University Press, 1995. * ''former People'', Douglas Smith. Pan Books, 2013.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sheremetev, Aleksandr Dmitryevich Russian nobility Aleksandr Dmitryevich Composers from the Russian Empire Conductors (music) from the Russian Empire 1859 births 1931 deaths