Natalya Sats

Natalya Il'inichna Sats (sometimes spelled Natalia Satz; Russian: Наталия Ильинична Сац; 27 August [O.S. 14 August] 1903 – 18 December 1993) was a Russian stage director who ran theaters for children for many years, including the Moscow Musical Theater for Children, now named after her. In the 1937, she fell victim to Soviet repressions but was rehabilitated in 1953.

Sats was born in Irkutsk, Imperial Russia, where her father, Ilya Sats, was in political exile. Ilya Sats, a composer, grew up in a Jewish family. He was a friend and protege of Leo Tolstoy. Natalya's mother, Anna Sats née Shchastnaya, the daughter of a Ukrainian general, left home as a young woman to become a professional singer in Montpellier where she met Ilya Sats. When Ilya was exiled Irkutsk, Anna followed him and soon gave birth to Natalya. The two were subsequently married. The family moved to Moscow in 1904, when Ilya Sats became music director of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT).

After the October Revolution in 1917, Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky proposed to start a theater for the children and MAT director Konstantin Stanislavsky recommended the 15-year-old Natalya Sats. Under Lunacharsky's direction, Sats quickly began producing traveling puppet shows on temporary stages around Moscow. Eventually, the government gave her a theatre building in Moscow for her performances. Here she established herself as a stage director and producer and began to attract international attention. In 1931 conductor Otto Klemperer invited her to stage Wolfgang Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in Buenos Aires, and Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff in Berlin.

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