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The Soullier[1] Circus came to Japan in 1871 and performed in both Yokohama and Tokyo. This triptych was published as an advertisement announcing a performance in January of the following year. The troupe was famous for its equestrian acts that included daredevil riding stunts, aerial acrobatics, and other remarkable feats carried out with incredible precision by highly trained Circassian and English horses. In 1843 the company of the equestrian L. Soullier came to St. Petersburg. This riding-master built an open wooden circus with an amphitheatre for 15,000 spectators.Later a french equestrian named Jacques Tourniaire went to Russia in 1816, where he established the first Russian circus. After his death, his sons Benoit and Francois followed in his footsteps, touring extensively in Siberia, Russia and traveling to India, China, and America.
See also: ESKİ İSTANBUL'DA FRANSIZ SAHNESİ Dr. METİN AND
[1] The French equestrian Louis Soullier (1813-1888), who managed Vienna's Circus at the Prater, in 1842 he married Laura de Bach, widow of Christophe de Bach and changed the name of Circus Gymnasticus[*] to Cirque Imperial de Louis Soullier. After six months he started touring (10 artists, 40 support crew and 33 horses), beginning at the Balkans, he settled for a time in Turkey (during Abdülmecid I era)[**] and acting as an equestrian consultant to the sultan, wearing the outfit of a Turkish Officer and calling his tent Caravanserai, and then continued to China, where he introduced the circus in 1854. When he returned to Europe in 1866, he brought with him Chinese acrobats who in turn introduced traditional Chinese acts such as perch-pole balancing, diabolo-juggling, plate-spinning, hoop-diving, et al., to Western audiences.
[*] The Circus Gymnasticus (Gymnastischer Zirkel) was one of the earliest permanent circuses built in continental Europe. It had been designed by the fashionable Austrian architect Joseph Kornhäusel for the Latvian equestrian Christoph de Bach (1768-1834), who had settled in Austria around 1805. The Circus Gymnasticus’s elegant building was erected in 1808 on the Prater—the old Imperial hunting ground that had become Vienna’s favorite park, and a focal point for fairgrounds amusements.It was a large structure shaped as a sixteen-sided polygon, built of stone on a heavy wooden frame. Its roof was supported by two circular rows of fourteen columns, and topped by a cupola above the ring, with large glass windows around its drum wich provided sunlight—since the performances had to be given in matinee only, so as not to compete with Vienna’s patented theaters. Its façade fronted an extension containing the foyer, with stairs leading to the Imperial box and eighteen private boxes on the balcony facing the ring entrance. Another extension at the back of the building contained the stables, which expanded under the seating at each side of the ring entrance.
The circus was said to accommodate 3,000 spectators—most of them no doubt packed on the bleachers and in the promenoir running behind them on the balcony level. A platform for the orchestra was set over the ring entrance. This circular design was reminiscent of Astley’s old Royal Grove in London.De Bach and his company performed six months each year at the Circus Gymnasticus in Vienna, and spent the rest of the year touring the Austrian Empire, the German states and the Italian kingdoms, with an occasional foray into Russia. During Christoph de Bach’s reign, the Circus Gymnasticus had one of Europe’s finest companies of performers, including at a time or another such luminaries as the superb equestrian Alessandro Guerra (who was de Bach’s son-in-law); the ropedancer Ravel; the clown and tumbler Ludovico Viool; the equestrienne Virginie Kennebel; and de Bach’s second wife, the ballerina on horseback Laura de Bach.
Upon the death of Christoph de Bach in 1834, the Circus Gymnasticus passed into the capable hands of his widow, Laura de Bach. It lasted another eighteen years, and the equestrian circus’s greatest names continued to grace its ring—among which the peripatetic French director, Louis Soullier, who eventually married Laura de Bach. But the building was never properly maintained or improved, and by 1852, when it was sold at auction for 6,000 florins, it was in sorry state of disrepair, and was consequently demolished. The following year, Ernst Jakob Renz erected a new circus building on Großen Fuhrmanngasse (which was renamed in 1862 Zirkusgasse). Nonetheless, in subsequent years, traveling circus companies erected temporary constructions on the old Circus Gymnasticus's site. SOURCE
[**] Abdülmecid I (Ottoman Turkish: عبد المجيد اول ‘Abdü’l-Mecīd-i evvel) (23/25 April 1823 – 25 June 1861) was the 31st Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and succeeded his father Mahmud II on 2 July 1839. His reign was notable for the rise of nationalist movements within the empire's territories. Abdülmecid wanted to encourage Ottomanism among the secessionist subject nations and stop the rise of nationalist movements within the empire, but failed to succeed despite trying to integrate non-Muslims and non-Turks more thoroughly into the Ottoman society with new laws and reforms.