Moscow

State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of the USSR

1922-1991

Over the years the theatre has had the following names: 1825–1853 – Bolshoi Petrovsky Theatre 1856–1917 – Imperial Bolshoi Theatre 1919–1922 – State Academic Bolshoi Theatre 1922–1991 – State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of the USSR since 1992 – State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia (Bolshoi Theatre) In the 1920s and 1930s, the Bolshoi Theatre actively sought new artistic forms. Ballets such as "Joseph the Beautiful" by Sergei Vasilenko (1925, choreographer Kasyan Goleizovsky), "The Red Poppy" by Reinhold Glière (1927, choreographer Vasily Tikhomirov), and "Flames of Paris" by Boris Asafiev (1933, choreographer Vasily Vainonen) were staged. Alongside Russian classics, the opera repertoire established works by Soviet composers ("The Love for Three Oranges" by Sergei Prokofiev, 1927) and foreign authors (such as "Salome" by Richard Strauss (1925) and "The Marriage of Figaro" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A major event was the premiere of "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" by Dmitri Shostakovich (1935). During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1943), the theatre troupe was evacuated to Kuibyshev, where "Eugene Onegin", "Swan Lake", "Aida", and "Carmen" were staged. On March 5, 1942, the first performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 took place. Asaf Messerer was appointed artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet during the evacuation. On September 26, 1943, the historic stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow reopened with Mikhail Glinka's opera "Ivan Susanin". In the post-war years, the theatre presented premieres of Sergei Prokofiev's ballets "Cinderella" (1945, choreographer Rostislav Zakharov) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1946, choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky), with Galina Ulanova in the lead roles. In opera, director Boris Pokrovsky played a crucial role. In the 1950s and 1960s, international collaboration expanded, and Yury Grigorovich joined the ballet company. The choreographer created new editions of "The Nutcracker" (1966) and "Swan Lake" (1969), and, together with artist Simon Virsaladze and conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, staged the ballet "Spartacus" by Aram Khachaturian (1968), which was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1970. In 1955, the famous "golden" brocade curtain, designed by the theatre's chief artist Fyodor Fedorovsky, appeared on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. A landmark event was the staging of "Carmen Suite" (1967), created by choreographer Alberto Alonso to music by Georges Bizet and Rodion Shchedrin specifically for Maya Plisetskaya. In the 1970s and 1980s, leading artists themselves took on the role of choreographers: Maya Plisetskaya choreographed ballets to music by Rodion Shchedrin ("Anna Karenina", "The Seagull", "The Lady with the Dog"), and Vladimir Vasiliev staged "Icarus", "Macbeth", and "Anyuta". Throughout the Soviet period, the Bolshoi Theatre company toured actively and with great success in Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries around the world. The collection of the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum features photographs, archival documents, artistic playbills, sketches, stage costumes, and other materials related to the history of the Bolshoi Theatre from 1922 to 1991.