Musical Theatre of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street is, after the Bolshoi, Moscow's second great opera and ballet house. It was formed in 1941 by merging two studios that Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, both co-founders of the Moscow Art Theatre, had created in the 1920s as laboratories for a new, realistic music theatre. Stanislavsky, whose acting method is still taught around the world, wanted to free singing from grand posing and tie it to believable characters. The theatre has since become known for bold stagings of classical opera and for adventurous contemporary ballet. Visitors step into an early 20th-century neoclassical building that is intimate for its size and offers a very different angle on Russian musical life than the tourist-heavy Bolshoi.