History of theatre

The word theatre means "place for seeing". The first recorded theatrical event was a performance of the sacred plays of the myth of Osiris and Isisin 2500 BC inEgypt. This story of the god Osiris was performed annually at festivals throughout the civilization, marking the beginning of a long relationship between theatre and religion.

The ancient Greeksbegan formalising theatre as an art, developing strict definitions oftragedyandcomedyas well as other forms, includingsatyr plays. Like the religious plays of ancient Egypt, Greek plays made use of mythological characters. The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism, acting as a career, and theatre architecture. In the modern world these works have been adapted and interpreted in thousands of different ways in order to serve the needs of the time. Examples are offered byAntigone, used in 1944 by Anouilhto make a statement about the Nazi occupation of France, and byBrechtin 1948, likeningCreontoHitlerandThebesto defeated Germany. The theatre masks of Greek performance became widely adopted in 1st- and 2nd-century Rome as a decorative theme, both within the home and in public spaces, and representations of two of the forms, of comedy and tragedy, came to stand for the theatre itself: a symbol that survives today.

Western theatre continued to develop under the Roman Empire, inmedieval England, and continued to thrive, taking on many alternate forms in Spain, Italy, France, and Russia in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The general trend over the centuries was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and theRenaissanceand toward a more realistic style, especially following theIndustrial Revolution. A uniquely North American theatre developed with the colonization of thenew world.

The history of Eastern theatre is traced back to 1000 BC with the Sanskrit dramaof ancientIndian theatre.Chinese theatrealso dates back to around the same time. Japanese forms ofKabuki,Noh, andKyogendate back to the 17th century AD. Other Eastern forms were developed throughoutChina,Korea, andSoutheast Asia.

The Perm State p.I. Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre

The Perm State P. Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre of Russia is one of Russia’s oldest and most distinguished companies. It has produced an ever increasing number of works with particular emphasis on the operas and ballets of Pyotr Tchaikovsky who was born near Perm and whose name the theatre bears. The repertoire also includes the traditional Russian operatic highlights: Borodin’s Prince Igor, Rimsky-Korsakov`s Tsar`s Bride and Snowmaiden, Mussorgsky`s Boris Godunov. Popular operas by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Leoncavallo,

The Perm Opera is proud to launch the operatic Russian premieres of J. Massenet’s Cleopatre and Cinderella, Rodion Schedrin’s Lolita, G. Händel’s Alcina, which is a breakthrough in the field of early music so rarely performed in Russia, a modern production of Bizet’s Carmen, Dvořák’s Rusalka, along with Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Mazeppa, which has not been performed in Perm since 1983, and which made its highly acclaimed debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York, USA) in January 2008. The Opera is the recipient of the prestigious national The Golden Masque award for Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (1996) and Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame (1998). In 1999 a group of Perm directors won the highest National State Award in Russia for mounting a cycle of operas based on Pushkin lyrics and called Pushkin in Opera. It has become a part of the Perm opera performing tradition that some world and Russian premieres of operatic rarities take place at the Perm Theatre.

The Tchaikovsky Perm State Ballet of Russia is now widely recognized as being one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world. Ballet came into its own there with the institution of a permanent company in the mid 1920’s. A performance of Giselle opened the first ballet season in Perm in 1926. The city has an honorable place in ballet history: it was the home of Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Kirov Ballet was evacuated from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during World War II. There have been close links between the two companies since then, which has greatly influenced the Perm performing tradition. With a company of 80 dancers, its current repertoire features ballet’s most-treasured classics as well as the works by contemporary choreographers, such as Vladimir Vasiliev, Oleg Vinogradov, Radu Poklitaru, Tatyana Baganova, Yuri Possokhov and Alexei Miroshnichenko. The Company is unique in that it draws all of its dancers from its own school, which is one of the most prestigious training institutions for ballet in Russia. It has become a tradition to do co-productions on the Perm stage with choreographers, directors and set designers from Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the USA and the U.K. Choreographic versions of Swan Lake (2005) mounted by the legendary ballerina Natalia Makarova (USA) and Le Corsaire (2008) by Vasiliy Medvedev (Germany) are perfect examples of such a highly favorable artistic collaboration. The Perm Ballet has also brought its new versions of the magical productions of The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, The Nutcracker, Les Sylphides and Giselle. Traditionally, Perm is the center for holding an Open Russian Ballet competition Arabesque supervised by the great ballet masters and former Bolshoi magnificent dancers Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova. Recent tours of both opera and ballet included engagements in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland and the USA.