Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theatre
Pushkin opera and ballet company in a 1903 People's House rebuilt as a theatre in 1935.
The theatre company was founded in 1935, when a purpose-made opera and ballet house opened with Borodin's Prince Igor. Its building on Belinskogo Street began life in 1903 as the People's House, put up with the backing of Maxim Gorky and Fyodor Chaliapin to a design by Pavel Malinovsky, and was substantially reconstructed for theatrical use in the early 1930s. The company took the name of Alexander Pushkin in 1937 and holds the title of academic theatre.
Alongside a standard repertoire of Russian and Italian opera and classical ballet, the theatre has become known for its contemporary programming under the conductor Dmitry Sinkovsky and the La Voce Strumentale orchestra. In 2021 it gained a second stage in the Pakgauz Concert Hall, a glass structure built inside two restored nineteenth-century iron warehouse frames on the Strelka where the Oka meets the Volga. The theatre runs an annual Contemporary Music festival each autumn.
Highlights
- Former People's House of 1903 backed by Gorky and Chaliapin
- Resident orchestra La Voce Strumentale
- Second stage in the glass Pakgauz Hall on the Strelka
- Annual Contemporary Music festival in the autumn
