If there is one constant to be noted throughout the lives of the three Komissarzhevskysthe nineteenth-century operatic tenor, his turn-of-the-century actress daughter, and her half-brother, who made a career outside the USSR as a directorit is their unwavering devotion to an ideal of theatre art that permeated every aspect of their existence. Whether this is literally true or not, it is how Victor Borovsky sees them and presents them in his magisterial tripartite biography.