Vakhtangov Theatre

On the Old Arbat, in a building with a colonnaded façade, stands the State Academic Yevgeny Vakhtangov Theatre — one of Moscow’s leading drama theatres. The building has kept the same address since 1921 and has long become part of the street’s appearance, while the production of “Princess Turandot” has served as the troupe’s calling card for decades. Today the theatre encompasses several performance venues and a training institute named after one of the company’s earliest actors.

The story began in 1913 with a student drama studio led by Yevgeny Vakhtangov, a pupil of Konstantin Stanislavsky. In 1920 the company took over a former mansion on the Arbat and joined the Moscow Art Theatre as its Third Studio; the premiere of “The Miracle of St. Anthony” on 13 November 1921 is regarded as the theatre’s founding date. After Vakhtangov’s death in 1922, the studio was led in turn by several directors, and in 1926 it was given his name. The theatre received academic status in 1956.

The building at 26 Arbat Street was built in 1873 by architect Alexander Kaminsky for the gold-mining magnate Berg in an eclectic style combining classicist and baroque features. By the late 1920s, thanks to the use of the inner courtyard, the auditorium’s capacity had grown from 150 to over a thousand seats. On the night of 24 July 1941, a direct bomb hit destroyed the building and claimed several lives, including that of actor Vasily Kuza. Reconstruction to a design by academician of architecture Pavel Abrosimov was completed in 1946–1947: the façade received a stately colonnade with a portico, and the auditorium took on the features of an ancient temple.

The studio’s greatest triumph was the production of “Princess Turandot,” based on Carlo Gozzi’s fairy tale, staged in February 1922 by an already terminally ill Vakhtangov, which shaped the theatre’s artistic style for decades to come. In 1926 the theatre staged Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Zoyka’s Apartment,” later banned along with his other plays. With the start of the Great Patriotic War, the company was evacuated to Omsk and did not return to Moscow until 1943, performing at the Theatre for Young Spectators until the building was restored. From 1939 to 1968 the theatre was headed by Ruben Simonov, under whom the troupe’s core repertory style took shape.

Since 2007 the artistic director was the Lithuanian director Rimas Tuminas, with Kirill Krok as general director; during these years the engineering systems were updated and a new stage opened in 2015 at 24 Arbat, the same street. The theatre now has four performance venues, runs the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute, and in 2020 a monument to the theatre’s founder was erected by the building’s walls. Nearby on the Arbat, a fountain dedicated to the production “Princess Turandot” has been operating for almost three decades.

The Vakhtangov Theatre remains one of the country’s leading theatrical stages and, at the same time, a monument of mid-20th-century architecture. The combination of the mansion’s pre-war history, the tragedy of the war years, and the postwar classicist reconstruction has made the building on the Arbat a recognizable symbol of Moscow’s cultural life, while the theatre’s repertoire stands as a model of continuity for the Vakhtangov school of acting.