At 16 Kaļķu Street, a theatre evening on 2 October 1883 became the beginning of a permanent troupe – the Riga Russian Theatre opened its work in the Uļeja building with the premiere of I. Shpazhinsky’s play “The Major’s Wife.” Its artistic director was the actor and director Yefim Sokolov, known on stage as Lavrov, and in its first season the troupe offered audiences a full sixty plays. Today it is the Mikhail Chekhov Riga Russian Theatre—the oldest Russian-language theatre outside Russia.

Late-19th-century Riga was a multilingual theatre city—alongside Latvian and German stages, Russian professional theatre also took firm root there. That environment later helped Riga become an important crossroads of stage art, where local and European theatrical traditions met.