Bolshoi in Russian means ‘grand’, and we can capture the grandness of Bolshoi theatre from a far from Teatralnaya Ploschad (Theater Square). The famous Apollo Quadriga, or the chariot of the gods, adorned the theater top. Apollo is depicted driving his chariot across the heavens, with four horses, delivering daylight and dispersing the night. The neoclassical façade with white pillars appeared on the Russian 100-ruble banknote and made it one of the iconic landmark of Moscow and Russia.
The interior is even grander, after an extensive six-year renovation of around 700 million US dollars restoring it to the original imperial decoration, it reopened in 2011 with the historical hall stage of the richly adorned in red and gold décor, with huge chandeliers. The Bolshoi's return to glory includes an interior that was once paneled with rare pine and gilded by hand with real gold for the best acoustics. The theater's stage also gained a sound-reflecting¸ specifically designed for opera and ballet stage.
The imposing home of the internationally-famed Bolshoi ballet and opera was constructed in 1824 by Osip Bove, under permission of Empress Catherine the Great to be a public theater. For most of the last three decades the Bolshoi was led by Yuri Grigorovich, an artistic director known as much for his accomplished, classical choreography. Under Grigorovich's tenure, and graced by the presence of a series of remarkably gifted dancers, the Bolshoi's became known as one of the world's great ballet companies.
Bolshoi Theatre became renowned all over the world for brilliant ballet dancers such as Maya Plisetskaya, Vladimir Vasiliev, Galina Ulanova, Maris Liepa. They built the theater's reputation and boosted their careers into international success.
And the list of reputation goes on, Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake premiered at the theatre in 1877. Other famous performances include Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, Adolphe Adam's Giselle, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and Khachaturian's Spartacus.
And the operas, Bolshoi theatre specializes in the classics
of Russian opera such as Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Glinka's A Life for the
Tsar, and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, as well as the operas of
Tchaikovsky. Many operas by western composers are also performed, especially
works of Italian composers such as Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini. Until the
mid-1990s, most foreign operas were sung in Russian, but Italian and other
languages have been heard more frequently on the Bolshoi stage in recent years.
THE END
Sources:
https://www.uvisitrussia.com/theaters/big_bolshoi/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshoi_Theatre
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