Vasily Zhivokini

Vasily Zhivokini
Born	Giovannio Lammona 1805 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	30 January 1874 Moscow, Russian Empire
Occupation	actor
Years active	1824-1874

Vasily Ignatyevich Zhivokini (Russian: Василий Игнатьевич Живокини, born Giovannio Lammona; 1805, Moscow, Russian Empire, — 30 January 1874, Moscow, Russian Empire) was a prominent Russian stage actor, a comic, associated with Moscow's Maly Theatre where he performed for fifty years.

Giovanny Lammona was born in Moscow, to Yoakhim de Lammona, an Italian artist and decorator. His mother Pelageya Vasilyevna Azarevicheva was a serf actress at Count Semyon Zorich Theatre, whom Yoakhim married when working with that troupe as decorator, in the early 1800s. In 1824, still a senior year student at Moscow Theatre Institute, Lammona joined the Moscow's Maly Theatre. From 1826 onwards, when, after his first marriage, he joined the Russian Orthodox Church, he's been known under his assumed Russian name, Vasily Zhivokini.

For the next fifty years Zhivokini was one of Moscow's leading actors, engaged in all the key comic parts of the contemporary repertoire: Dobchinsky and Zemlyanika in Gogol's Revizor; Zagoretsky and later Repetilov in Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Kochkarev and Podkolesin in Gogol's Marriage, Rasplyuyev in Krechinsky's Marriage (by Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin), and many others. He was appearing regularly in plays by Alexander Ostrovsky (Rispolozhensky in It's a Family Affair-We'll Settle It Ourselves, Gradoboyev in An Ardent Heart, Kuritsyn in Live Not as You Would Like To, etc.), mostly as merchants and senior servants, habitually resorting to humorous improvisations playing havoc with the original text, much to the amusement of the appreciative audiences.

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