person
Virginia Zucchi
Zucchi
also: Цукки, Zucchi
Italian ballerina hugely popular on the Russian stage in the 1880s; her name is used as the punchline of a one-line joke, and she recurs as a byword for fashionable, expensive entertainment enjoyed at public expense.
Reading notes
- A Drunk Man's Conversation with a Sober Devil §14 the Tsukki races
A joke on the ballerina Virginia Zucchi (Цукки), wildly popular on the St. Petersburg stage in the mid-1880s; Satan's habit of going to watch her recasts a fashionable theatrical craze as an idle boss neglecting his office.
- Two Newspapermen §10 about Zucchi
Virginia Zucchi, the Italian ballerina whose 1885 Petersburg debut triggered a sensation in the press and popular "Zucchimania."
- Poems and Dubia (school-age and disputed juvenilia) §393 NEW DISCOVERIES
A one-line joke: the ballerina Zucchi's hypothetical son would logically be called "Zucchi's son" (Zuchkin) -- absurdist wordplay on Russian patronymic naming conventions applied to a foreigner's name.
- On August §26 Zucchi
Virginia Zucchi, the celebrated Italian ballerina whose Russian engagements were a sensation of the day -- named here as a hypothetical exception so prized that even she couldn't keep the hibernating bears awake.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §10 Zucchi wore everyone out
Virginia Zucchi, the Italian ballerina whose performances in Russia caused a sensation in the mid-1880s; named here only as one more "Russian enthusiasm" that has since worn itself out, i.e. her novelty had faded by 1888.