Stanislavsky Opera Theatre

The Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre (Russian: Московский академический Музыкальный театр имени народных артистов К. С. Станиславского и Вл. И. Немировича-Данченко) is a music theatre in Moscow.

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre was founded in 1941 when two companies directed by the legendary reformers of twentieth-century theatre — Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko — merged: the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre (established at the end of 1918 as an Opera Studio of the Bolshoi Theatre) and the Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre (set up in 1919 as a Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre).

The new theatre followed the artistic principles of its founders, who applied the system of the Moscow Art Theatre to opera and ballet. Both Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko rejected the current conception of opera as «costume concert». They wanted to bring it closer to drama and comedy, revealing the main idea of the plot through psychologically motivated action. The ballet company entered the Theatre as a part of Nemirovich-Danchenko's troupe. It was the former company of the Moscow Art Ballet, established in 1929 by Victorina Krieger, the valued ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre. She was Artistic Director and one of the principal dancers of the Moscow Art Ballet. Soon after Stanislavsky's death, Nemirovich-Danchenko took charge of all the companies (Vsevolod Meyerhold invited by Stanislavsky to work for his theatre, was arrested in 1939, and no other stage director could prove equal to Nemirovich-Danchenko). Then the theatre was given its present name.

In 1918 Stanislavski founded an Opera Studio under the auspices of the Bolshoi Theatre, though it later severed its connection with the theatre. Its successful production of Werther in 1923 was banned while the director was abroad. In 1924 it was renamed the "Stanislavski Opera Studio" and in 1926 it became the "Stanislavski Opera Studio-Theatre", when it moved into its own permanent base at the Dmitrovsky Theatre. In 1928 it became the Stanislavski Opera Theatre. Shortly before his death in 1938 Stanislavski invited Vsevolod Meyerhold to take over the direction of the company; Meyerhold led the theatre up to his own arrest in June 1939.

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Wikipedia