Career
According to the Russian critics, his interpretations of Hamlet and Othello put Adamian"s name among the best tragedians of the world. Adamian"s mother died when he was one and a half years old. His artistic career started in 1866 at the Armenian theatre in Constantinople.
Since 1879 he performed in Baku, Shusha, Alexandrapol, Tiflis.
In the 1880s, when the Ottoman Turkish reaction "held the national minorities in scorn", Adamian had an artistic tour in foreign (Russian and Ukrainian) cities, acting both in Armenian and French languages. In 1888 a Russian theatrical critic wrote about Petros Adamian in "Odessky Vestnik": "Not Possart, not Rossi, not Barnai, no one of European actors visitted to Russia gave us so absolute, artistically complete Hamlet as Mr.
Adamian did". In 1888 he returned to Constantinople.
Among his best roles of that period: King Lear, Arbenin (Lermontov"s "Masquerade"), Khlestakov (Gogol"s "Revisor"), Mikael (Sundukian"s "One more victim"), et cetera Being a "great Shakespearean actor" and the first Armenian scientific researcher of William Shakespeare plays, in 1887 he wrote the "Shakespeare and his Hamlet tragedy criticism" research.
He also made translations from Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Semen Nadson, Nikolai Nekrasov. Adamian died of a throat cancer, in the Russian hospital.
Adamian’s traditions were developed by Armenian actors Siranuysh, Hovhannes Abelian and others
The Armenian Drama Theatre of Tbilisi is named after Adamian.