Zarnitskaia, Efrosiniia Filippovna

(pseudonym of E. F. Azguridi). Born Feb. 4 (16), 1867, in Odessa; died June 30, 1936, in Golta, present-day Pervomaisk. Soviet Ukrainian actress.

In 1886, Zarnitskaia graduated from the music school of the Society of Fine Arts in Odessa. In 1889 she made her stage debut with M. L. Kropivnitskii’s company, and from 1894 to 1912 she acted with various Ukrainian companies. Zarnitskaia performed at the T. Shevchenko Petrograd Ukrainian Theater from 1919 to 1924 and at the Krasnozavodskii Theater in Kharkov from 1927 to 1930. A leading figure in the Ukrainian theater, Zarnitskaia affirmed realistic and democratic tendencies in art. Her roles included Kharitina in Karpenko-Karyi’s The Hired Girl, Natal’ia in Mirnyi’s Lymerivna, and Aza in Staritskii’s Gypsy Aza. She had a beautiful soprano voice and sang in operas, her best roles including Oksana and Natalka in Gulak-Artemovskii’s operas Zaporozhian Cossack Beyond the Danube and Natalka From Poltavka.