Other Life of the Odessa Theatre. A New Building

In 1873, 64 years later, The City Theatre was completely destroyed by the fire.

A year later the Odessa Municipality announced a competition among the architects to create a design for the new temple of arts that would be equipped with the latest innovative machinery and would become equal to the best European samples. As a result two Viennese architects Ferdinand FELNER and Herman HELMER, who had already created the theatre buildings in Vienna, Budapest and other European cities, took up the construction.

The Felner and Herman’s design was not detailed and the architects did not come to Odessa during the construction period. The best local architects, in particular Felix GONSIOROVSKY, Alexander BERNARDAZZI and Yuri DMITRENKO, had to revise and amend the design project.

It had been almost eleven years between the fire and the first stone that was put into the foundation of the building. The construction was performed by the contractors and the local constructing materials were used. 1,5 mln rubles was the enormous sum spent on the labor and materials. It was natural that such expenses would not be welcome by everyone and some critical articles with ideas of better application of funds frequented in the newspapers. Nevertheless the contractors did not breech the agreement terms and the works were completed on the 15th of September, 1887. It was the date stipulated in the contractual agreement. It was the first building in Novorossiya equipped by electricity and steam heating.

“The Odessa Theatre is the best in the world!”, Ferdinand Felner exclaimed when he came to Odessa to participate in the ceremonies dedicated to the completion of the works. Ferdinand Felner handed in a symbolic golden key to the Odessa Theatre to Gregory MARAZLI, the Odessa Mayor. That symbolic key was placed into the metal box and fixed at the foot of the big mirror installed on the stairs of the French entrance facing Pas-le-Royal Park.

The opening ceremony took place on the 1st of October, 1887. The orchestra led by the Odessa composer Gregory LISHIN performed a solemn cantata after which the drama company under I. CHEREPENNIKOV, the first entrepreneur of the renewed theatre, presented a scene from Alexander PUSHKIN’s drama Boris Godunov and Act 3 from Alexander GRIBOYEDOV’s comedy Grief of Wits.

The facade of the theater is decorated with a two-level portico with a quadriga of the tragedy muse, Melpomene, and sculptures of Orpheus and Terpsichore that symbolize opera and ballet. There are two sculptural groups at the foot of the entrance to the central portico that allegorically represent comedy and tragedy. The semicircular part of the building has four niches at the top with busts of Pushkin, Griboyedov, Gogol and Glinka representing poetry, drama, comedy and music. Figures of playful cupids around the front façade increase the elegance, while the crowning dome gives a completed look to the structure. The splendor and luxury of the interior is striking. Baroque details carry us into a wonderful world and were ‘intended for the creation of spiritual ecstasy'. Generously gilded moulding, magnificent sculptures, and a great number of mirrors all pull a person out of ordinariness and into the enchanting world of music and theater.

Plafonds of the auditorium are decorated with four pictures of Viennese painter, N. Lefler, on the themes of Shakespeare's works "Hamlet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Winter's Tale", and "Twelfth Night". Meanwhile, the huge festive chandelier suspended above the auditorium weighs about two tons.

The Odessa stage also remembers the performances of famous singers like G. Anselmi, T. Ruffo, M. Battistini, S. Krushelnitskaya, A. Nezhdanova, S. Lemesheva, Y. Chavdar, A. Solovyanenko, Y. Miroshnichenko, B. Rudenko, B. Gmyri, M. Bieshu, Y. Obraztsova, D. Khvorostovskiy, M. Caballe and many others, as well as the festival of young soloists of USSR opera and ballet - winners of various domestic and foreign contests, which was held here in 1978.

The history pages written by ballet masters are no less glorious as those of the musicians and composers. The names of K. Goleyzovskiy, I. Moiseyev, P. Virskiy, V. Smirnov-Golovanov, A. Ryndina, I, Mikhaylichenko, M. Petukhov, S. Voltaire, N. Barysheva and more are connected with Odessa, and the performances of internationally famed artists such as I. Duncan, Y. Semenova, G. Ulanova, M. Liepa, M. Plisetskaya occurred frequently on this stage.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04