Kuskovo Estate Museum

This guide to Kuskovo Estate Museum in Moscow follows Praskovya, a blacksmith's daughter born into serfdom on the Sheremetev estate, who trained as an opera singer under the stage name Zhemchugova and performed for Catherine the Great in 1787. It traces how Count Nikolai Sheremetev fell for her over the years, freed her from serfdom in 1798, and married her in secret in 1801, a scandal the family tried to bury. Listen for how the pink stucco palace behind the old theater still stands, twenty-six rooms built purely to dazzle.