In 1880, her husband retired his military career with the rank of captain lieutenant, and they moved to the city of
Penza, where they pursued their music careers. From 1887 to 1890, he sang at the St. Petersburg
Mariinsky Theater, and then organized a musical/drama troupe the "Association of Opera Artists" which toured the cities of the
Volga region, the center and south of Russia. The conductor of the opera performances was his wife Aleksandra Vasilievna Zakharyina-Unkovskaya. The Opera programs included the best works of the classical repertoire of the time:
A Life for the Tsar, Ivan Susanin, Mermaid, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, The Demon, Faust,
Il Trovatore, Aida, "Pagliacci", "Masquerade Ball", "Lohengrin". N. V. Unkovsky sang the parts of the Demon and Amonasro (opera "Aida"). In the seasons of 1893, 1994, and 1898, the Unkovsky troupe performed in
Kaluga (100 miles SW of
Moscow) where they decided to settle. In Kaluga, Aleksandra Vasilievna became active as a violin and a vocal teacher at the private school of F. M. Shakhmagonov. After the death of her famous operatic husband in the summer of 1904, Aleksandra Vasilievna, now a widow, worked on issues of synesthesia of sound and color, interpreted in a mystical way. She was born with this gift and devoted herself to teaching it from late 19th century. Sound-to-color synesthesia or
Chromesthesia is a type of synesthesia in which sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape and movement. Individuals with synesthesia (sound-color) are consciously aware of this in daily life. Alexandra Vasilievna developed a system of musical education (color-sound-number), and published it ("The Method of colors, sounds and numbers" c.1915–16) for which she received an award from the
Milan Conservatory. She also lectured and wrote in the spirit of Theosophical ideas about sound, colour and music. She actively participated in the publication of "Herald of Theosophy". On April 21, 1909, a department of the Russian
Theosophical Society was opened in
Kaluga, of which she was a founding member. Traveling frequently, she had extensive contacts with European theosophists and was acquainted with many prominent figures in the world of music and art. In 1909, the great painter
Wassily Kandinsky became acquainted with a presentation Unkovskaya made (at the Theosophical Congress in
Budapest) regarding her innovative system in music education, which led to his own discoveries in his art. Kandinsky famously stated: ''"to impress a tune upon unmusical children with the help of colours…. She has constructed a special, precise method of 'translating' the colors of nature into music, of painting the sounds of nature, of seeing sounds."
This transcended the spiritual in art and led him to develop the concept and formula of a chain reaction experience (reciprocal relationship/artist and viewer): "Emotion — sensation — the work of art — sensation — emotion."'' The concept was based on the principle of the resonance of string instruments. Many Russians of noble hereditary birth were victims of
Stalin's political repressions (also known as
Red Terror), including her sons, who fell victim to such repressions. ==Unkovsky's children==