For decades Moscow has had a reputation as a city of theatres. The birth plays of the historic "Bolshoy", "Maly" and "Moscow Art" theatres the city has been and steel is a centre for the development exploretary modern ideas in the dramatic art and is famous for it's great number of highlygifted, interesting directors, actors, playwrigts and artists.

Every evening the doors of Moscow theatres open to streams of theatre-goers. The best Moscow theatres devoted themselves to development of the principals of directing and acting laid down by Stanislavsky, Meerhold, Nemerovich-Danchenko, Vachtangov and others. The discoveries and successes of Moscow theatres today exist due to experience and triumphs of preceding generations.

I'd like to tell you about the Bolshoy Theatre.

The magestic building of the Bolshoy Theatre stands in Sverdlov Square in Moscow's central quater, not far from Kremlin. This is the leading Russian opera house with the best vocalists and choreographers in it's company.

The Bolshoi traces it's history to 1776 when a standing opera company was organized in Moscow. The first opera shown in Bolshoi theatre was opera "life of tsar" (now "Ivan Susanin").At later times operas by Dargomyzhsky, Serov, Tcaikovsky, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rubinstein were produced here.

At the same time the Bolshoi company staged the best operas and ballets by West European composers - Mozart, Rossini, Weber, Verdi and others.

The Bolshoi ballet company enjoys well-deserved fame as the world's finest ballet. This is equally true of it's brilliant realistic style of perfomance and repertoire.