person

Elizaveta Goreva

Goreva

also: Горева, Е. Н. Горева, Elizaveta Nikolayevna Goreva

Elizaveta Nikolayevna Goreva (1855-1917), a leading Russian tragic actress of the 1880s admired for emotionally powerful performances in melodrama and tragedy at Moscow's Korsh Theater and elsewhere. In "The Critic" the drunken narrator dismisses her as cold and talentless ("a block of ice," "lemonade water") -- the story's fictional narrator's inebriated bile, not a historical judgment; Goreva was in fact widely praised by contemporary critics and audiences for exactly the passionate intensity he claims she lacks.

Reading notes

The Critic §35 Goreva
Elizaveta Nikolayevna Goreva (1855-1917) was a leading tragic actress of the period, admired for emotional power in tragedy and melodrama. The noble father calls her acting "a portion of pistachio ice cream" and "lemonade water" -- vivid comic abuse, and the reverse of how contemporary audiences and critics actually described her.
To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 September 1889. Sumy. §9 Goreva and Abramova will not hold out long
Elizaveta Goreva and Mariya Abramova each ran short-lived private theatrical companies in Moscow in this period; Chekhov's prediction that neither will last but that both will still manage to earn the Society (of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers, on whose committee he served) two or three thousand roubles in royalties/dues is a real, unsentimental professional assessment, offered without malice toward either actress-manager.
To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 14 September 1889. Moscow. §4 the age of the telegraph, of Goreva's theater, and of telephones -- abuse is advertising's own sister
Chekhov names Goreva's Moscow theatrical troupe as a symbol of the modern, noisy, publicity-driven age, in the same breath as the telegraph and telephone -- new technologies of the 1880s. The joke folds into his claim that bad reviews ("abuse") function as free advertising for his novella.
To I. L. Leontyev, 18 September 1889. Moscow. §7 Goreva's
Elizaveta Goreva, actress who ran a rival Moscow theatrical company to Abramova's; "The Proposal" had been running there.
To A. S. Suvorin, 17 October 1889. Moscow. §4 Гореву бьют и бранят
Elizaveta Goreva, a well-known Moscow tragic actress running her own theater troupe; Chekhov here reports (and partly shares) harsh public criticism of her company circulating in the press, judging her troupe "drab" with "overwhelming" pretensions -- a private theater-gossip opinion, not a considered critical verdict.
To N. M. Kozhin, 17 January 1890. Petersburg. §4 it has been given to Madame Goreva for the whole of the current season
Yelizaveta Nikolayevna Goreva (1855--1917), leading Moscow tragic actress and theater manager, who held the exclusive Moscow performance rights to \emph{The Proposal} for the 1889--90 season; this is the plain business reason Chekhov gives Kozhin for declining the request -- the rights were already committed, not a judgment on the merits of Kozhin's proposal.
To I. M. Kondratyev, 28 January 1890. Petersburg. §4 the promise I had given to Goreva
Yelizaveta Nikolayevna Goreva (1855--1917), leading Moscow tragic actress and theater manager, who held exclusive Moscow performance rights to \emph{The Proposal} for the 1889--90 season -- the same commitment Chekhov cited to Kozhin on 17 January as his reason for refusing a Moscow staging; here the same rights are the obstacle the Society of Art and Literature's renewed request forces him to work around.
To I. M. Kondratyev, 28 January 1890. Petersburg. §5 I have no wish to be beholden to Madame Goreva and want none of her favors
Chekhov's own gloss on his irritation: granting the Society's request means, in effect, asking Goreva's exclusive claim to bend, which he resents doing -- not because he doubts her talent (contrast the fictional narrator's mockery of a thinly fictionalized Goreva-like figure in "The Critic," which the corpus's entity note on explicitly flags as satire, not Chekhov's own judgment) but because it puts him in her debt for a favor he did not seek.