Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet

(the Novosibirsk Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet), Siberia’s leading musical theater. It opened in 1945 with Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin. The building is one of the largest in the USSR (1931–15, architects T. Ia. Bart, A. Z. Grinberg, and A. V. Shusev; engineer P. A. Pasternak), and the auditorium seats 2,000.

The theater premiered a number of operas, including Erkel’s Bank-ban (1954), Laputin’s Masquerade (1956), Kas’ianov’s Ermak (1957) Janáček’s Her Step-daughter (1958), Magidenko’s The Road (1959), and Lazarev’s The Bedbug (1963). Among the ballets staged for the first time in the USSR are Morozov’s Doctor Aibolit (1947; State Prize of the USSR, 1948), Korchmarev’s The Little Scarlet Flower (1949), and Savel’ev’s Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (1956). The theater’s leading artists include the singers A. F. Krivchenia, V. P. Arkanov, V. I. Sorochinskii, M. G. Kiselev, V. Ia. Kirsanov, and L. V. Miasnikova and the ballet soloists V. V. Iuvacheva, R. L. Cherekhovskii, F. L. Cherekhovskii, M. M. Lentiaeva, and A. A. Belova. In 1963 the Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet received the title “academic theater.”

The theater’s best opera productions have been Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1948; new production, 1962) and Khovanshchina (1952), Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa (1949) and The Queen of Spades (1969), Glinka’s Ruslan and Liudmila (1951), Dzerzhinskii’s The Quiet Don (1951), Meitus’ The Young Guard (1952), Verdi’s Il Trovatore (1955), Khrennikov’s Into the Storm (1957), Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1963) and G. Ivanov’s Alka’s Song (1967).

Among the theater’s most outstanding ballet productions have been Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty (1952), Swan Lake (third staging, 1955), and The Nutcracker (second staging, 1961); Prokofiev’s The Stone Flower (1959), Cinderella (1964), and Romeo and Juliet (1965; second staging, 1972); Asafev’s The Flames of Paris (1971); and Shchedrin’s Anna Karenina (1973).

In 1974 the members of the theater troupe included the singers People’s Artist of the USSR L. B. Miasnikova, Honored Artists of the RSFSR A. Ia. Levitskii, V. G. Egudin, N. T. Dmitrienko, Z. Z. Didenko, A. M. Gracheva, N. I. Logutenko, P. A. Ul’ianova, G. S. Chizhova, A. G. Zhukov, S. P. Vakh, and I. M. Kruglov and the ballet soloists People’s Artist of the USSR L. I. Krupenina, Honored Artists of the RSFSR Iu. V. Grevtsov, F. G. Kaidani, G. D. Rykhlov, and L. A. Guseva. The principal conductor in 1974 was People’s Artist of the RSFSR I. A. Zak; the principal director, V. V. Bagratuni; the principal choreographer, A. A. Dement’ev; the principal chorus master, Honored Artist of the RSFSR E. P. Gorbenko; and the principal artist (set designer), Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR A. I. Morozov. The theater has toured the major cities of the Soviet Union and has performed several times in Moscow. The ballet troupe has been on tour in Egypt, Japan, France, Hungary, and Australia.