Historical Background
The building of the Moscow School of Contemporary Play Theater has a rich history. Before the revolution it housed the Hermitage hotel and restaurant, owned by the Moscow merchant Yakov Pegov and the French chef Lucien Olivier, inventor of the famous salad. Great figures of Russian culture loved to spend time here. Gorky celebrated the premiere of “The Lower Depths,” Dostoevsky gave a speech about Pushkin, Turgenev marked his jubilee here in April 1879, Chaliapin performed, and Chekhov was a frequent guest at the restaurant. On March 22, 1897, at a dinner at the Hermitage, he began coughing up blood.


