Role of Protagonist On Saint-Petersburg Stage In the First Quarter of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century. Prehistory of the Character
This article gives analysis of acting technique on Russian stage in early 19th century underlining its general characteristics of combination and diversity of artistic features. West-European theatre of that epoch developed according to the principles of late classicism and high sentimentalism but gradually it started to tend to ideas of romanticism. Acting art followed the basic concepts of common artistic trends and varied major qualification principles of Thespian art - Mask or Character. The first part of the article gives comparative analysis of these two principles. Nevertheless, the author believes that the acting technique of the two most prominent Russian actors of that time did not fit the European pattern mentioned above. Alexei Yakovlev who was mostly attached to the ideas of sentimentalism and Ekaterina Semyonova who introduced the austere classic tradition, both could not be characterized either as Mask or as Character creators. The author suggests that both actors in their own way through their repertoire, their status in the company and their special quality of acting represented the specific theatre role type they could be characterized as «actor-protagonist».