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This paper retraces the adaptation of a Russian event in French literature and Italian opera through the first half of the 19th century. The story of a young girl, who walks all the way from Siberia to Saint-Petersburg to ask the Tsar to reprieve her father perfectly illustrates an emerging interest in Russia, and especially in Siberia, in European literature. Its transposition at first to a novel then to the theater and finally to opera shows an exemplary line through the popular literary genres of the 19th century as well as the changes required by each choice but also by the public’s taste. Finally, the event also influences the collective imagination by leaving its mark in a number of fictional texts with Siberian subjects.