Natalya Sats

The family moved to Moscow in 1904, when Ilya Sats became music director of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT).

He died in October 1912.

In the year of the Russian Revolution, Sats was a school girl, but she was well connected to the new Bolshevik regime through her uncle, Igor Sats, who was the secretary and brother-in-law of the Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky.

At the age of 15, she was made head of the theatre and music section of the Department of Public Education of the Moscow Soviet, and organised a series of programmes for children, employing professional performers, musicians and circus acrobats, in 11 of Moscow's districts.

In October 1918, she established one of the world's first dedicated theatres for children using professional performers, on Manonovsky Alley, Moscow.

Sats's theatre was visited by Lunacharsky, who proposed to start a theatre for children, subsidised by his department, under his chairmanship, with a six-member directorate that included Sats and MAT director Konstantin Stanislavsky.

The original Director of the First Children's Theatre, Henriette Pascar refused to accept the political demands placed on the theatre, and was sacked in 1923, after putting on a stage version of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson in which the British flag was raised on stage, and a toast drunk to the King.

Meanwhile Sats and her new partner, Sergei Rozanov, by whom she had a son, Adrian, who accepted that theatre should serve the political interests of the soviet state, opened a new children's theatre, The Moscow Theatre for Children, in temporary headquarters.

Here she established herself as a stage director and producer.

She directed her first play in 1925, in the same year that she married the head of the Moscow soviet's finance department, Nikolai Popov, by whom she had a daughter, Roxana.

She 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.

In February 1936, the Central Committee decided to open a new children's theatre, the Central Children's Theatre, on the premises of what had previously the Second Moscow Arts Theatre, close to the Bolshoi Theatre, with Sats as its first director.

One of the first works she commissioned in this role was the Golden Key, by Alexei Tolstoy, which featured the puppet Buratino, who resembled Pinochio.

It was first staged in December 1936.

In April 1936, having spotted the composer, Sergei Prokofiev at a performance, with his two young sons, commissioned a work that was to change the history of performance for children.

She wished to produce a play which would introduce children to the instruments of the orchestra, and she persuaded Prokofiev to compose Peter and the Wolf and worked closely with him on its creation, contributing many ideas to the libretto.

Peter and the Wolf premiered at the Moscow Philharmonic on 2 May 1936.

Due to illness, Sats was not able to attend this premiere, which according to Prokofiev was not a success.

However, three days later, Sats narrated Peter and the Wolf at its first performance in the Moscow Theater for Children.

This second performance proved a huge success and effectively launched the work.

Peter and the Wolf, dedicated to Sats, went on to international success.

It has been recorded over 400 times, and translated into many languages.

Sats continued to narrate performances of Peter and the Wolf through the rest of her career.

In November 1936, she married Israel Veitser, the People's Commissar for Internal Trade, whom she had met during a trip to Berlin in 1931, when he was soviet trade representative there.

In 1937, she fell victim to Soviet repressions, but was rehabilitated in 1953.

She was a recipient of the USSR State Prize, People's Artist of the USSR award, Lenin Prize, Hero of Socialist Labor medal, and the Lenin Komsomol Prize.

Sats was born in Irkutsk, Russian Empire, where her father, Ilya Sats, was in political exile.

Ilya Sats, a composer, grew up in a Jewish family.

He was a friend and protégé of Leo Tolstoy.

Natalya's mother, Anna Sats née Shchastnaya left home as a young woman to become a professional singer in Montpellier where she met Ilya Sats.

When Ilya was exiled to Irkutsk, Anna followed him and soon gave birth to Natalya.

The two were subsequently married.

Sats was arrested, during the Great Purge, on 21 August 1937, and taken first to Lubyanka prison and then to Butyrka prison.

She refused to sign a confession, and in October was sentenced to five years at a labor camp in Siberia.

Various reasons have been given for her arrest.

including a report that she was accused of being a "family member of a traitor to the Motherland", as the wife of Israel Veitser.

- but he was not arrested until ten weeks after her, on 3 November 1937, which makes it unlikely that he was the reason she was arrested.

(He was shot in May 1938).

Natalya Il'inichna Sats (sometimes spelled Natalia Satz; 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.