For decades Moscow has had a reputation as a city of

theatres. The birth plays of the historic "Bolshoy", "Maly" and

"Moscow Art" theatres the city has been and steel is a centre for

the development exploretary modern ideas in the dramatic art and

is famous for it's great number of highlygifted, interesting

directors, actors, playwrigts and artists.

Every evening the doors of Moscow theatres open to streams

of theatre-gowers. The best Moscow theatres devoded themselves to

developing the principals of directing and acting laid down by

Stanislavsky, Meerhold, Nemerovich-Danchenko, Vachtangov and

others. The discoveries and successes of Moscow theatres today

exists due to experience and triumphs of preceding generations.

I'd like to tell you about the Bolshoy Theatre. The magestic

building of the Bolshoy Theatre stands in Theatre Square in

Moscow's central quater, not far from Kremlin. This is the

leading Russian opera house with the best vocalists and

choreographers in it's company.

The Bolshoi traces it's history to 1776 when a standing

opera company was organized in Moscow. The first opera shown in

Bolshoi theatre was opera "life of tsar" (now "Ivan Susanin").At

later times operas by Dargomyzhsky, Serov, Tcaikovsky, Borodin,

Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rubinstein were produced here.

At the same time the Bolshoi company staged the best operas

and ballets by West European composers-Mozart, Rossini, Weber,

Verdi and others.

The bolshoi ballet company enjoys well-deserved fame as the

world's finest. This is equally true of it's brilliant realistic

style of perfomance and repertoire.