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The Lives of the Bolshoi

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The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow is a focal point of Russian culture.

It was a long time coming. One catastrophe after another set back Moscow’s efforts to have a permanent musical theater.

The story begins in 1776 when Prince Urusov, a devotee of dramatic art, secured a ten-year government monopoly on all theatrical performances in Moscow. At first Urusov’s troupe gave all of its performances in the mansion of Prince Vorontsov. Urusov then invited English impresario Michael Maddox to become the troupe’s director.

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According to the terms of Urusov’s monopoly, he was to build within five years a stone theater “with such exterior decoration that it might serve as an ornament to the city.” A site on Petrovka Street was selected for the new theater. But before the new theater was begun, a fire destroyed the theater at Prince Vorontsov’s mansion.

Urusov suffered heavy financial losses. He sold his share of the monopoly to Maddox, who energetically pursued building the promised theater, which became known as the Petrovsky Theater or simply the Opera House. For twenty-five years the Opera House served as the scene for operatic, ballet, and dramatic performances.

Then, in 1805, it too burned to the ground. The following year the troupe was given a magnificent place on Arbat Street–a building known as the “big theater”– or in Russian–Bolshoi. The Bolshoi Theater was ringed with columns and flanked by porches and galleries. But the new theater was to be short-lived. In the fires that erupted as Napoleon’s armies retreated from Moscow in 1812, it was destroyed.

Eight years passed before another theater was begun at the original Petrovska Street location. Finally, in December 1824, the new Petrovska Bolshoi Theater was finished.

One more disaster lay ahead though. In 1851 a fire gutted the new Bolshoi, But this time there was a silver lining, because the replacement Bolshoi that opened in 1856 — the theater that stands today–is visually and acoustically the best of all.

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