The Mariinsky Second Stage, expected to open next year, will be a contemporary performance space with soaring glass walls and a roof-top amphitheatre designed to attract younger and wider audiences to the performing arts in St. Petersburg, Russia.
St. Petersburg’s 19th century Mariinsky Theatre will get a new home when the Mariinsky Second Stage, expected to open next year, will combine history and modern design in a new USD 629 million, glass-walled concert hall.
The new theatre will be a contemporary performance space with soaring glass walls and a roof-top amphitheatre designed to attract younger and wider audiences to the performing arts in Russia’s former imperial city, and, thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows, will have views of the golden cathedral domes of St. Petersburg.
The site, with its bare grey walls, still looks far from completion right now, but the new stage will be the third and most modern-looking building of the Mariinsky enterprise, which holds 600 shows a year and employs 2,500 people.
The new theatre comes in the wake of a nearly USD 700 million revamp of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, which was plagued with scandal, but eventually achieved the aim of returning the Bolshoi to its 19th-century gilded and bronzed glory after centuries of use and decades abuse under communist rule.
The Mariinsky troupe will move to the Second Stage building after it opens its six stages and several rehearsal rooms to spare the historic original building for its own renovation.