At just 17 years old, Natalia Sats founded the Moscow Theatre for Children, and by the age of 28, she became the first female opera director, staging Verdi's "Falstaff" in Berlin. However, upon returning to the USSR with her husband, she faced difficulties: she was sentenced to five years in a labor camp. This is the story of the famous director and theatre educator Natalia Sats.

Natalia was born in 1903 in Irkutsk, but a year later her family moved to Moscow, where her composer father got a job at the Moscow Art Theatre. It was there, as an infant, that Natalia played her first role. At that time, Meyerhold was staging the play "The Death of Tentajil," for which her father was composing music. The director envisioned a child's cry at the climax of the play, but achieving the desired effect proved difficult. One day, when Ilya Sats took his daughter to rehearsal, Natalia cried at the right moment, and Meyerhold was amazed at how perfect it was.

From childhood, Natalia Ilyinichna decided to dedicate her life to theatre. By the age of 10, she was studying at the Griboedov Drama Studio and graduated from a music school. Thanks to her initiative, the first children's theatre appeared in Moscow, where she worked as artistic director for 16 years. Her talent and energy attracted the attention of renowned directors, and Natalia worked at the Berlin Kroll Opera and the Colón Theatre in Argentina, where her concerts were sold out.

In 1937, Sats returned to the USSR, unaware that her husband had been sentenced as an enemy of the people, and she was labeled as a "family member of a traitor to the Motherland," which led to her imprisonment for five years. In the Gulag, she suffered a paralysis, but Natalia found the strength to continue living: she organized a choir and staged amateur performances. After her release, she was forbidden to return to Moscow and lived for a long time in Alma-Ata. She returned to the capital only in 1964 and continued her work in theatre. Shortly before her death, Natalia established a charitable foundation to support the arts for children. She passed away in 1993.