The book that you hold in your hands is the result of many years of work by the author. The publication of such a chronograph of the musical stage, as it was seen and heard in the twentieth century in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad, is being undertaken for the first time. This book is also unusual in that it combines an abundance of facts, names and titles of a reference nature with personal intonation, with fascinating and interesting details of the author's story, who shared with millions of others a passion for the musical "light genre."