History
The company was founded in 1776 by Prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Urusov and Michael Maddox. Initially, it held performances in a private home, but in 1780, it acquired the Petrovka Theatre and began producing plays and operas.
The current building was built on Theatre Square in 1824 to replace the Petrovka Theatre, which had been destroyed by a fire in 1805. It was designed by architect Andrei Mikhailov, who had built the nearby Maly Theatre in 1824.
At that time, all Russian theatres were imperial property. Moscow and St Petersburg each had only two theatres, one intended for opera and ballet (these were known as the Bolshoi Theatres), and one for plays (tragedies and comedies). As opera and ballet were considered nobler than drama, the opera houses were named "Grand Theatres" ("Bolshoi" is Russian for "large" or "grand") and the drama theatres were called the "Smaller Theatre" ("Maly" is Russian for "small", "lesser", or "little").
The Bolshoi Theatre's original name was the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, while the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre (demolished in 1886), was called the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre.
The Moscow theatre was inaugurated on 18 January 1825 with a performance of Fernando Sor's ballet, Cendrillon. Initially, it presented only Russian works, but foreign composers entered the repertoire around 1840. A fire in 1853 caused extensive damage; reconstruction was carried out by Alberto Cavos, son of Catterino Cavos, an opera composer. The theater reopened in 1856. During World War II, the theatre was damaged by a bomb, but it was immediately repaired.
The Bolshoi has been the site of many historic premieres including Tchaikovsky's The Voyevoda and Mazeppa, and Rachmaninoff's Aleko and Francesca da Rimini. Feodor Chaliapin, Leonid Sobinov, Antonina Nezhdanova, Ksenia Derzhinskaia and other outstanding opera singers have performed at the Bolshoi.
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