93. Tchaikovsky at the Alexandrinsky
The Alexandrinsky Theater overlooks Ostrovsky Square. I've been to several festivals in the square in front of or behind the theater, including PetroJazz and St. Petersburg Harley Days, as well as an opera performance. After hanging around outside for a few hours on multiple occasions, I've been wanting to go inside the theater.
The theater itself is beautiful - designed by the Italian architect Carlo Rossi 185 years ago as part of a perfectly-proportioned street, which I wrote about here. There are six levels of seating (floor level plus five balconies), a huge chandelier, and a large stage. The lobby is ornately decorated and the warren of staircases and hallways connecting all the balconies is plushly decorated. The top floor includes a display of theater memorabilia and costumes from throughout its history. And the history of this theater goes back much further than the building itself. The theater was founded on August, 30 1756 by Peter the Great’s daughter Empress Elizabeth, and was the first national theater in Russia.
Even though the Mariinsky Theater is the premier ballet theater in St. Petersburg, the Alexandrinsky's location right next door to the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet made me think this might be a good option as well. And with their production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake filling the calendar in August, this seemed like a great opportunity. Other than The Nutcracker, Swan Lake is one of the only ballets with which I am familiar (in part due to the 2010 film "Black Swan"), and I definitely wanted to see a Russian ballet while living in St. Petersburg. Plus, the score is fantastic.
I tried to purchase tickets the day of the performance on the Theater's web site, but it seemed that their e-commerce platform was stuck in the early 2000s and I was unable to successfully complete the transaction (which was challenging to determine because I received no error messages - in either Russian or English). So, we walked to the box office (just a 10-minute walk from the Tolstoy House) and managed to snag some of the last available tickets, in the least expensive category on the top balcony. I thought these would be the worst seats in the house (although I did know the view would be unobstructed), but in fact there were a number of seats even on the lower balconies (and at higher prices) that would have had a worse viewing angle. We did have to lean forward a bit and look down at a sharp angle, but we could see almost all of the stage and had an excellent view of the musicians at work in the orchestra pit.
Of course, we did not take any pictures during the performance (unlike a few obnoxious tourists who seemed to think that the rules did not apply to them). I haven't been to the ballet often enough to be a good judge of a production's quality, but as far as I could tell the dancers were uniformly excellent and the music, costumes, and choreography were all well done. For the balletomanes out there, this production went with the tourist-friendly "happy ending" version of the story and featured a single ballerina who danced both the white swan and the black swan roles.
The theater itself is beautiful - designed by the Italian architect Carlo Rossi 185 years ago as part of a perfectly-proportioned street, which I wrote about here. There are six levels of seating (floor level plus five balconies), a huge chandelier, and a large stage. The lobby is ornately decorated and the warren of staircases and hallways connecting all the balconies is plushly decorated. The top floor includes a display of theater memorabilia and costumes from throughout its history. And the history of this theater goes back much further than the building itself. The theater was founded on August, 30 1756 by Peter the Great’s daughter Empress Elizabeth, and was the first national theater in Russia.
Even though the Mariinsky Theater is the premier ballet theater in St. Petersburg, the Alexandrinsky's location right next door to the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet made me think this might be a good option as well. And with their production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake filling the calendar in August, this seemed like a great opportunity. Other than The Nutcracker, Swan Lake is one of the only ballets with which I am familiar (in part due to the 2010 film "Black Swan"), and I definitely wanted to see a Russian ballet while living in St. Petersburg. Plus, the score is fantastic.
I tried to purchase tickets the day of the performance on the Theater's web site, but it seemed that their e-commerce platform was stuck in the early 2000s and I was unable to successfully complete the transaction (which was challenging to determine because I received no error messages - in either Russian or English). So, we walked to the box office (just a 10-minute walk from the Tolstoy House) and managed to snag some of the last available tickets, in the least expensive category on the top balcony. I thought these would be the worst seats in the house (although I did know the view would be unobstructed), but in fact there were a number of seats even on the lower balconies (and at higher prices) that would have had a worse viewing angle. We did have to lean forward a bit and look down at a sharp angle, but we could see almost all of the stage and had an excellent view of the musicians at work in the orchestra pit.
Of course, we did not take any pictures during the performance (unlike a few obnoxious tourists who seemed to think that the rules did not apply to them). I haven't been to the ballet often enough to be a good judge of a production's quality, but as far as I could tell the dancers were uniformly excellent and the music, costumes, and choreography were all well done. For the balletomanes out there, this production went with the tourist-friendly "happy ending" version of the story and featured a single ballerina who danced both the white swan and the black swan roles.
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