Vera Fyodorovna Komissarzhevskaya (Russian: Ве́ра Фё́доровна Комиссарже́вская; 8 November 1864, St. Petersburg - 23 February 1910, Tashkent) was the most celebrated Russian actress at the turn of the twentieth century.
Vera Komissarzhevskaya was the daughter of Fyodor Komissarzhevsky, a leading tenor of the Mariinsky Theatre, and sister of Theodore Komisarjevsky, a famous theatrical director. Her mother was Mariya Nikolaevna Shulgina, who was the daughter of General Nikolai Shulgin, a war hero and officer in the Preobrazhensky regiment.
At the age of 19 she married Count Muravyov but preferred to keep her stage name after the marriage. Since 1896, she worked in the Alexandrine Theatre of St Petersburg. Her greatest triumph was the role of Nina Zarechnaya in the premiere of Chekhov's The Seagull in 1896.
In 1904, Komissarzhevskaya established her own theatre, the Komissarjevsky Theatre, which proved immensely popular with the Russian aristocracy in promoting the ideas of Russian Symbolism. The theatre was directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold in 1906, but his idiosyncratic approach led to Komissarzhevskaya's rupture with him the following year.
Vera's death from smallpox during a tour in Central Asia shocked many of her admirers and occasioned some poignant lyrics from Alexander Blok. One of the major theatres of St Petersburg still bears her name.
There was a biographical film about her, Ya - aktrisa ("I am an actress"), released in the USSR in 1980, starring Natalia Saiko as Komissarzhevskaya.
Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky frequently corresponded with his daughter Vera (who was his favorite), and who would also visit him as much as she could. Towards the end of his life he wrote to her mother, Mariya Nikolaevna Shulgina:
"Vera!? To say that she is often in my thoughts... would be an understatement, for never a moment passes without my thinking of her! My whole being rests on my feelings and my thoughts about her. She is to my spirit what air is to physical existence! Human being, friend, daughter, sister, family — everything is concentrated in her alone..."