Novosibirsk Opera House: repertoire

2025 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-24 17:46

Novosibirsk is a beautiful and majestic city located in the north of the country. It is one of the largest cultural centers in Russia. The city has many concert halls, museums and libraries.

Pioneering project

The Novosibirsk Opera House is known throughout the country. Its building was built in the first half of the 20th century. This is an original architectural complex. The building is located in the center of Novosibirsk. This architectural structure is one of the largest and most majestic buildings in which cultural institutions are located.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Novosibirsk Opera House underwent a grand reconstruction. The institution received the most modern equipment. The uniqueness of the architectural project is associated with a huge dome. This structure is not supported by supporting structures in the form of columns or buttresses. The total area and volume of the building are huge.

Revolutionary Art

The Novosibirsk Opera House is a unique project. His life began with one innovative idea. Soviet cultural workers wanted to make the theater truly revolutionary. For this, it was proposed to abandontraditional structure of the building and the auditorium. The presence of stalls, boxes, balconies has always been associated with the distribution of spectators by property. For Soviet art, all people were equal.

Novosibirsk Opera House was originally planned as a grandiose building capable of performing numerous functions. According to the plan of the architects, in this building it is possible not only to put on performances, but also to hold congresses, sports competitions and circus performances. The auditorium was designed as an amphitheatre. It was also planned to install structures for water sports. They wanted to project films onto the dome, made like a planetarium.

Change style

The Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater was supposed to become the pearl of the USSR. But not everything went smoothly. The fact is that the building was designed in the style of constructivism. It is characterized by:

• emphasis on functionality;
• no frills and decorations;
• predominance of strict geometric shapes.

But in the early 30s, a new direction won in Soviet architecture. The pompous, monumental style, supported by the party and the government, is today associated with the grandiose construction of the Stalinist period. Famous Moscow skyscrapers are examples of this architectural direction.

Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater was already a third built when changes were made to its project. All technical innovations wereabolished. The building was built as an ordinary cultural institution. Today this building is one of the most beautiful in Russia. It gives this impression partly due to the unique design. The hallmark of the building is its huge dome.

Major overhaul, reconstruction, restoration

The first years of independent Russia were difficult for the Novosibirsk Opera. In the mid-1980s, the reconstruction of the theater was announced. It was planned to be implemented within two years. No one could have imagined then that the overhaul of the building would take more than ten years. The reconstruction was completed at the beginning of the 21st century, in the new state.

Huge difficulties associated with the repair of the dome. During the construction period, this unique structure was manually covered with metal scales. At the end of the 20th century, there were no specialists in the country who could do it again.

Another important issue was the improvement of stage conditions. The architects of the early 20th century, carried away by grandiose ideas about the multifunctionality of the structure, forgot that they were building an opera house. Therefore, the acoustics of the stage and the hall were, to put it mildly, imperfect. The location of the lighting complexes also presented a problem. Without going into technical details, we note that all this did not allow bringing the theater to the world level, excluding the tour of "stars" of the first magnitude. But fortunately, the problems were solved.

Pearls of the stage

Novosibirsk Opera House, whose poster is decorated with masterpieces of the worldclassical music, demonstrates the diversity of artistic preferences of the audience. Here you can see traditional productions, such as Verdi's La Traviata and Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades. Giselle by Adam, La Bayadère by Minkus, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are on the ballet stage.

In the theater you can watch concerts of popular opera arias and romances (for example, "Opera-Gala"). The artistic direction and modern innovations do not ignore. In particular, the poster announced a rhythm ballet to the music of Rybnikov "Juno and Avos".

Through hardships to the stars

The Novosibirsk Opera House, whose repertoire includes non-standard productions, is known for the recent big scandal. The director of the play "Tannhäuser" (music by Wagner) was accused of insulting the feelings of believers. A few years earlier, the director of the theater had died under strange circumstances.

Novosibirsk Coliseum (as this institution is often called) offers the public performances for children. There are a lot of them in the repertoire. Children's operas and ballets attract the youngest audience to the theatre. It is possible to note such performances as "Terem-Teremok", "Three Little Pigs", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Tale of the Priest and his worker Balda".

The Opera and Ballet Theater in Novosibirsk is one of the best cultural institutions in Russia. Therefore, grandiose productions of complex works are often carried out here. An example is the ballets "Spartacus" by Khachaturian and "Pulcinella" by Stravinsky. Sadlythe famous "Tannhäuser" should also be added to the list. This Wagner opera is notable for its unusual music and makes very high demands on the singers. Due to the complexity of the performance, the works of the German composer are rarely heard on the Russian stage.