Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin, the famous opera singer, was a frequent visitor to the Bugry estate in Kaluga Oblast. The estate belonged to the Obninsky and later Troyanovsky families. The Obninskys had been friends with Chaliapin from the very start of his career, and doctor Ivan Troyanovsky treated his children. Later the house with a mezzanine in Bugry was bought by the artist Pyotr Konchalovsky, where he lived with his family most of his life and created his key works. Today, Konchalovsky’s dacha is a natural monument of regional importance.
At the end of May 1900, Feodor Chaliapin received his first invitation to Italy. He was already a famous artist of the Imperial Theaters and was preparing to give ten performances at the La Scala Theater. The artist Alexander Golovin had made for him a sketch of the Mephistopheles costume for the opera “Mephistopheles” by Arrigo Boito. At the end of February 1901 Chaliapin wrote a letter to the artist:

Boito’s Mephistopheles had premiered 30 years earlier and was a fiasco. The composer made a complete revision of the libretto, the music and the cast. In the new version the role of Mephistopheles was performed by Feodor Chaliapin, Faust — by Enrico Caruso; and Arturo Toscanini was the conductor. The opera became very popular in Italy and abroad. Feodor Chaliapin sent the postcard featuring him as Mephistopheles from Milan to the 14-year-old Lidia Sokolova in the midst of the premiere performances. She was the granddaughter of Peter Obninsky, a Russian lawyer, publicist and public figure, and the daughter of Lidia Obninsky and Dmitry Sokolov, a descendant of one of the founders of Prokhorov’s manufacture.