The Samara Opera House, today the Dmitri Shostakovich Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, was founded in 1931 and opened on 1 June 1931 with Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Its building on Kuybyshev Square, one of the largest squares in Europe, was erected on the site of a demolished cathedral to plans by the Leningrad architects Noi Trotsky and Nikolai Katsenelenbogen and completed in 1938 as a palace of culture. When the city served as the wartime reserve capital, the evacuated Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow performed here from 1941; on 5 March 1942 Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony received its premiere on this stage. Slonimsky's opera Visions of Ivan the Terrible also had its world premiere here under Mstislav Rostropovich. An extensive renovation began in 2006, and since 2022 it has borne Shostakovich's name.
The Samara Opera House, opened in 1931 in Constructivist style, was the alternative quarters of the Bolshoi Theatre during the Second World War — Shostakovich composed his famous Leningrad Symphony here in 1941-42.
At a glance
- Type
- Opera house
- Location
- Samara, Russia
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