The Bolshoi Theatre. Culture and Politics. A New History

A living, unorthodox history of the interaction between politics and art, power and society, the Tsar and the Theatre.

The Bolshoi Theatre is one of Russia’s most famous brands. In the West, the word Bolshoi doesn’t need translation. But it wasn’t always so. For many years, the main music theater of the empire was considered to be the Mariinsky, and Moscow was a kind of “theatrical Siberia.”

The situation changed dramatically by the end of the 19th century. With the efforts of patrons, a flourishing culture was created—and riding that wave, the Bolshoi rose as well. In it shone Fedor Chaliapin, Leonid Sobinov, Antonina Nezhdanova, Sergei Rachmaninoff. The first years after the Revolution were the hardest in the history of the theatre. Lenin, with fanatical persistence, tried to shut it down. And the savior turned out to be… Joseph Stalin, who valued the Bolshoi as a professional politician.

The Bolshoi Theatre has always been an essential tool in the dialogue between power and society. The cultural historian and musicologist Solomon Volkov’s book is a political history of the Bolshoi from the 19th century to our days—the story of how the Tsar and the Theatre interacted.