Bolshoi Theatre

Interesting facts

Michael Maddox, the Englishman who co-founded the company with Prince Urusov, began his career as a tightrope walker.

The Bolshoi Ballet is often called the largest ballet company in the world, with more than 200 dancers on its roster.

The present building opened on 18 January 1825 with a performance of Cendrillon, a ballet with music by the Spanish guitarist Fernando Sor.

Before the six-year restoration that began in 2005, engineers judged more than three quarters of the building's structure to be unstable.

The 2005–2011 restoration officially cost about 21 billion roubles, and some independent estimates put the real figure considerably higher.

Rachmaninoff's first opera, Aleko, and his later Francesca da Rimini both received their premieres on the Bolshoi stage.

The Bolshoi Orchestra gave its first symphonic concert in May 1919 under the conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

Even an early Soviet attempt to close the theatre in December 1919 failed, days after it was renamed the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre.

The building was damaged by bombs during the Second World War and later repaired.

In August 1979 the star dancer Alexander Godunov defected, and the dancers Leonid Kozlov and Valentina Kozlova followed weeks later.

Why it is worth it

The eight-columned portico on Theatre Square, crowned by Apollo driving a four-horse chariot, is one of the most familiar façades in Russia — it even appears on the 100-rouble banknote. Behind it is the Bolshoi, home to one of the oldest and most celebrated ballet and opera companies in the world.

The company dates its birth to 1776, when Catherine II licensed Prince Pyotr Urusov to stage theatrical performances in Moscow; the English entrepreneur Michael Maddox became his partner. Fire shadowed its early decades: the Petrovka theatre burned in 1805, and its successor on the Arbat was lost in the blaze of 1812 during the French occupation. The present building was raised in 1821–1824 by Joseph Bové, working from a competition design by Andrei Mikhailov, and opened in January 1825. It was reworked in 1843, damaged by fire again in 1853, and rebuilt under Alberto Cavos, whose interior largely shaped the hall known today; the bronze quadriga above the portico is by the sculptor Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg.

The stage has seen major premieres, including Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake on 4 March 1877, as well as works by Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich. A second auditorium, the New Stage, opened next door in 2002. A reconstruction completed in 2011 restored the gilded, red-velvet auditorium, which seats around 1,740, and its celebrated acoustics.

Moscow itself grew from the Kremlin outward in rings, and the theatre stands just north of that historic core, a few minutes' walk from Red Square, on a square laid out as part of the city's rebuilding after 1812.

Getting there

The theatre is in central Moscow, about 1 km from the city centre, on Theatre Square in the Tverskoy District. The nearest metro stations are Teatralnaya and Okhotny Ryad. The nearest airport is Sheremetyevo International (SVO), about 27 km to the north-west.

From the encyclopaedia

The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic opera house in Moscow, Russia, originally designed by architect Joseph Bové. Before the October Revolution it was a part of the Imperial Theatres of the Russian Empire along with Maly Theatre in Moscow and a few theatres in Saint Petersburg.

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Bolshoi Theatre

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia