Komissarzhevskaya Theatre

On Italyanskaya Street in St Petersburg, in the building of the Passage trading house, operates the drama theatre named after the actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya. The company was formed in besieged Leningrad in 1942, while the stage it occupies had already witnessed the performances of many generations of artists long before the theatre itself came into being.

The idea of connecting Nevsky Prospekt with Italyanskaya Street by a covered shopping arcade was put forward by Count Yakov Essen-Stenbock-Fermor. The project's architect was Rudolf Zhelyazevich, and in the spring of 1848 the new Passage, with its attached theatre hall, received its first visitors. In the 1860s, some of the most prominent Russian writers of the day gave public readings of their works on this stage, and in 1904 the actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya left the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre to found her own drama company here, in the Passage. In 1901 the building was rebuilt by the architect Sergei Kozlov, commissioned by its new owners, the Baryatinsky family.

The renovated auditorium held 900 spectators in the stalls and on the balcony; it was adorned with Corinthian columns, and the ceiling was divided by moulded ribs into three decorative painted panels. The foyer received an Art Nouveau stained-glass window, while the coving of the hall was styled in the transitional manner between Baroque and Classicism. The theatre entrance and box-office vestibule were arranged so that spectators entered the hall directly from the Passage's shopping arcade.

In the autumn of 1941 frontline concert brigades began gathering in the theatre hall, and on 18 October 1942 a new “City Theatre” opened here with a production of Konstantin Simonov's play The Russian People — thus began the history of what would become the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre. Its company was made up of performers from the besieged city's radio committee and other local ensembles. From the autumn of 1944 the theatre was known as the Leningrad Drama Theatre, and in 1959 it took the name of the actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya. It was granted academic status in 1980, and from 1966 to 1991 the company was led by Ruben Agamirzyan, who staged here Alexei Tolstoy's trilogy about Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, which became the theatre's defining production.

Today spectators enter the theatre through the ground floor of the adjacent building at 21 Italyanskaya Street, which adjoins the historic Passage building. The theatre maintains a repertoire drawn from both Russian and foreign drama, continuing the tradition established by Komissarzhevskaya's company and the directors of the Siege years.

The Komissarzhevskaya Theatre remains a rare example of a stage whose history links pre-revolutionary merchant St Petersburg, a legendary actress of the Silver Age, and the heroism of actors in the besieged city. The Passage building itself, with its shopping arcade and theatre hall, has shaped the appearance of Italyanskaya Street, just steps from Nevsky Prospekt, for nearly two centuries.