She attended a private school for girls, was fluent in French, German and English, and took music and singing lessons after rigorous school days. Growing up in between her two brothers, Konstantin and Vladimir, Olga was pampered. Two years after she was born, her family moved to Moscow, where they became accustomed to an upper-middle-class lifestyle. Around the time of Olga's birth, her father, Leonard, was in charge of a factory in Glazov, a small town northeast of European Russia. Though both of her parents were of German origin, her father claimed Russia as their family heritage. Knipper was born on 21 September 1868 in Glazov to Austrian-born Leonhardt August Knipper and Russian Anna Ivanovna von Saltza of Baltic German descent. She played Ranevskaya again in 1943, when the theatre marked the 300th performance of The Cherry Orchard. She married Anton Chekhov, the author of these plays, in 1901. She played Arkadina in The Seagull (1898), played Elena in the Moscow premiere of Uncle Vanya (1899), and was the first to play Masha in Three Sisters (1901) and Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard (1904). Knipper was among the 39 original members of the Moscow Art Theatre when it was formed by Konstantin Stanislavski in 1898.
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