Alexandrinsky Theatre

The Alexandrinsky Theatre is the oldest still-active drama stage in the country, its history reaching back to a decree issued by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in the autumn of 1756, establishing Russia's first permanent public theatre. The first company, then known as the Russian Theatre for the Performance of Tragedies and Comedies, was headed by Fyodor Volkov, who went down in history as the founder of the Russian stage, while the playwright Sumarokov managed its affairs. After Volkov's death his work was carried on by the actor Dmitrevsky, and the company itself before long gained the status of an imperial court theatre.

The company acquired its own building, familiar today to every resident of St Petersburg, only after a long wait: for nearly eight decades the actors performed in various venues, while a wooden booth theatre run by an Italian troupe stood on the future theatre's site before eventually being bought out by the treasury. It was only in the autumn of 1832 that the company moved into the building designed by the architect Carlo Rossi, its grand facade facing Nevsky Prospect — an example of the Empire style and one of the city's most recognisable buildings. According to mid-19th-century estimates, the auditorium, with its tiered boxes, stalls, balcony and galleries, could hold nearly one and a half thousand spectators. It was around this time that the theatre acquired the name Alexandrinsky, in honour of the wife of Nicholas I.

The 19th century made this stage the leading venue of Russian drama: it hosted the premieres of Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Gogol's The Government Inspector and Ostrovsky's The Storm, while at the century's end the premiere of Chekhov's The Seagull famously flopped here. The actors Karatygin, Sosnitsky, Varlamov and Savina, and later Komissarzhevskaya, all shone on this stage. After the revolution the theatre was renamed the State Drama Theatre, and from 1937 it bore the name of Pushkin; in the 1920s productions here were staged by Meyerhold, Radlov and Akimov, and later by Tovstonogov. During the war the company was evacuated to Novosibirsk and performed on the stage of the Krasny Fakel Theatre. The theatre's historic name was restored in the 1990s. In 2013 the complex's second, modern stage opened, and from the early 2000s until the mid-2020s the theatre's artistic direction was headed by Valery Fokin.