Theatre building

The official chronicle of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre has been kept since 1870, when Mikhail Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Tsar” was first staged on its stage. However, its real history is deeper. The wooden prototype of the theatre was located on Obvinskaya Street (now 25th October Street) and burned down in 1863. Within a year, a new building was built, again wooden, where the first opera premiere took place. In 1879, the theatre moved to a three-storey stone building in the style of late Russian classicism, built according to the design of the architect Rudolf Karwovsky. The construction was carried out with donations from the townspeople. A large contribution was made by the prominent public figure of Perm Pavel Diaghilev, grandfather of the famous impresario Sergei Diaghilev. The new building was equipped with various technical innovations of that time. For example, the heating and ventilation systems were combined, and gas lighting was used instead of kerosene lamps.

By the beginning of the 20th century, with the expansion of the repertoire and the increase in the opera troupe of the theater, there was a need for a new, more spacious and technically advanced building. Half a century later, in 1957, a major reconstruction of the theater began according to the design of the architect Nikolai Kuznetsov. The peculiarity of this project was that new premises were built around the existing “box”. The dimensions of the historical stage were preserved. As a result, after two years, “the old building was as if wrapped in new walls”: its area increased by one and a half times, and the number of seats in the auditorium — to 1020 (previously it was 900). The modern foyer has preserved the facade columns of the old building, and behind the scenes you can find a fragment of brickwork laid out in the 19th century.

In later years, the theater’s management repeatedly addressed the problem of a new reconstruction of the building. Thus, from 1986 to 2008, at least six different projects were developed. Only in 2010 did the idea of ​​​​reconstruction begin to take shape. An international competition was held for the best solution for the construction of a new stage and the reconstruction of the historical building of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater. The English architectural bureau David Chipperfield Architects won.