The city of St Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as his ‘window on the West’ – part of his plan to connect backward Russia to the modern world. A court theatre was included as part of Peter’s modernizing policy, but plays were being performed there for more than 30 years before the first opera was staged. This was La forza dell’amore e dell’odio (‘The Force of Love and Hate’, 1736) by the Italian composer Francesco Araia (1709–c. 1770). Araia’s Cephalus and Procris (1755) was the first opera to be performed in Russian. In 1757 St Petersburg’s first public theatre opened, and opera shared the repertoire with stage plays. Later, the Bolshoi Kammeny or Grand Stone Theatre (1783) opened, followed by the Maly or Small Theatre. Italian opera was staged at the Bolshoi between 1829 and 1832 and in 1840. For a long time after its premiere there, Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar (1836) was performed at the start of every season. By the century’s end, the opera had been given some 700 times. In 1862 Verdi’s La forza del destino was premiered at the Maryinsky, one of St Petersburg’s three imperial theatres.

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