The interiors were gorgeously decorated and deeply impressed visitors with this display of French luxury. Aumont's artistic troupe was highly professional and held in great esteem in professional circles. All of his actors were proud to participate in its shows while it opened doors to any other theatrical enterprise in Russia. Behind the front doors of Aumont's theatre was hidden its real purpose: for many years it was well-known as a fashionable brothel.
Aumont's theatre was the permanent object of sharp criticism of the defenders of public morals. Stanislavsky, for example, called it a 'den of lewdness' and called for its immediate closure. Ironically, the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre inherited Aumont's concert hall in Kamergersky Lane, but totally renovated it, trying to obliterate its noxious influence.
Despite the atmosphere of debauchery, however, many 'respectable' people felt obliged to satisfy their curiosity at the new phenomenon. Aumont continued to organise film shows as part of his package of entertainments, before quitting his business in In Aumont was due to be prosecuted for embezzlement but, it was discovered, had sold all his property and left the country.
Yuri Tsivian et al. Buy the book.
