The history of Russian music enters upon a new period with the succession of the Empress Anne. The national melodies now began to be timidly cultivated, but the inauguration of a native school of music was still a very remote prospect, because the influence of Western Europe was now becoming paramount in Russian society. Italian music had just reached the capital, and there, as in England, it held the field against all rivals for many years to come. Soon after her coronation, in 1732, the pleasure-loving Empress Anne organised private theatricals in her Winter Palace and wrote to Bishop Theofane Prokovich, asking him to supply her with three church singers. The piece given was a "school drama" entitled _The Act of Joseph_, and in its mounting and composition, a famous pupil of the Slaviano-Latin Academy took part, Vassily Cyrillovich Trediakovsky, poet and grammarian, and one of the first creators of the literary language of Russia. The rest of the actors consisted of the singers lent by the Bishop and of pupils selected from the Cadet Corps, among them Peter and Carl, sons of Anne's favourite, Biron. Some of the actors' parts are still in existence, with descriptions of their costumes, and details as to the requirements of the piece, which seem to show that the entire Biblical story of Joseph was presented, and that some allegorical personages such as Chastity, Splendour, Humility, and Envy, were introduced into the play. Splendour was attired in a red cloth garment, slashed and trimmed with silver braid; Chastity was in white without ornaments, crowned with a laurel wreath and carrying a sheaf of lilies. Besides Jacob, Joseph, and his Brethren, there were parts for King Pharaoh and two of his senators, Wise Men, slaves, attendants, and an executioner, who, we read, was clad in a short tunic of red linen and wore a yellow cap with a feather. These old-fashioned, edifying plays soon bored the Empress Anne. Italian actors appeared at the Court and gave amusing comedies, occasionally containing musical interludes. The Empress employed Trediakovsky to translate the pieces that were played before her; for she was no Italian scholar. The new form of entertainment was so much to her liking that she determined to establish a permanent Italian company in St. Petersburg, and was the first to open a theatre in Russia exclusively for opera. This brings upon the scene a personality inseparably linked with the history of Russian opera: Francesco Araja, who is the first palpable embodiment of operatic music in Russia, for all his predecessors who composed for the plays of Kunst and Fürst have remained anonymous.