Opening of the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre (1783)

The Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in Saint Petersburg opened on 24 September 1783 with Giovanni Paisiello's opera Il mondo della luna. The retrieved passages date the building to 1783, not 1776, so the legacy row's 1776 date and 'Bolshoi Theatre' naming are corrected: the theatre was built as the Kamenny Theatre and only renamed the Bolshoi after an 1802 rebuild.

Episodes

Background and detail

Background. The Saint Petersburg Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, known in Russian as Bolshoi Kamenny Teatr (the Big Stone Theatre of Saint Petersburg), was a theatre in Saint Petersburg. It was built in 1783 to Antonio Rinaldi's Neoclassical design and was originally called the Kamenny, meaning Stone, Theatre.

Opening. The theatre's opening took place on 24 September, with Giovanni Paisiello's opera Il mondo della luna performed for the occasion. The passages do not state the year of the opening performance separately, but the building's completion in 1783 and the opening on 24 September are recorded together.

Later Status. After a rebuilding in 1802 to designs by Thomas de Thomon, the theatre was renamed the Bolshoi, but it burned down in 1811. Until 1886 it served as the principal theatre for both the Imperial Ballet and the Imperial Russian Opera, after which performances moved to the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre.

People involved

Sources

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.