Michael Maddox

Michael Maddox (1747–1822; Russian: Михаил Егорович Маддокс, Mikhail Yegorovich Maddox, also spelled Medoks, Maddocks, Mattocks) was an English entrepreneur and theatre manager active in Imperial 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 equilibrism.

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 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.

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