The Bolshoior Grand Theater in Russian, was founded in 1776 by Tsarina Catherine, with a building inaugurated five years later and named Theater Petrovsky. We then play buffet Italian then very popular in Russia, but also ballets. But in 1805, it was destroyed by fire. The architect Karl Rossi was called upon and a new one was built in 1808, this time called the Arbatski Theater, named after the place where it was built. Designed like a Greek temple, it is entirely made of wood. However, in 1812, when the great fire lit by the Russians to force the Napoleonic Great Army to leave the city and retreat under the conditions we know, the building was entirely devoured by the flames…
It was not until 1819 that a competition was launched for the construction of a new opera house for Moscow. It was Andrei Mikhailov, professor at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, who won the latter, with a project immediately considered too expensive. Prince Galitzine, who had just been appointed military governor of the city, commissioned another architect, Joseph Bové (you can’t make this up), to correct Mikhailov’s copy, which he did extensively. Construction began in July 1820 and the new Petrovsky Theater (it was to take its original name) turned out to be much larger than the first. Hence its name, which will prevail, of Bolchoï Petrovskithe latter name quickly disappearing from use.
The building, designed to be in the center of the city with an urban plan accompanying its construction, impresses not only with its size, but also with its functionality and technical installations. The poet Lermontov, in his Panorama of Moscow, describes it thus: “On a wide square stands the Petrovsky Theater, a work of the most recent art, an immense building built according to all the rules of taste, with a flat roof and a majestic portico, on which stands the alabaster Apollo, standing on one leg in an alabaster chariot, motionlessly leading three alabaster horses and looking with annoyance at the Kremlin wall, which jealously separates it from the ancient sanctuaries of Russia.” This famous tank that we see today on 100 ruble notes, with the theater on the back. Unfortunately, it is not the current theater that we can see today, since this new Bolshoi was in turn destroyed by flames in 1853. It was rebuilt more or less identically two years later.
Two centuries ago, it is The Triumph of the Musesby the much forgotten Verstovski and Aliabiev, specially written for the occasion, which is performed with great success for the inauguration, followed by a great ballet, Cinderellaby Fernando Sor, a Spanish composer then living in Moscow and who had created it a little more than two years earlier in London. Since we have no testimony of Verstovsky’s opera, it will therefore be the opening of this ballet which will give you a distant testimony of the festivities.
