The Drama Theater dates back to 1798 when Prince Nikolai Shakhovskoy moved his serf theater to Nizhny Novgorod and opened Nizhny Novgorod Public Theater. The theater we can see today was built on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street in 1896, and it came to be known as the ’Blue Theater’ due to the color of the seats upholstery.

It was here that the glittering career of the famous singer Feodor Chaliapin began, with his role of Ivan Susanin in Mikhail Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar. It was here where he met his first wife, the Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi.

You should definitely watch their classic productions such as The Philistines, The Golovlyov Family, Macbeth or hilarious comedies It Runs in the Family, Key for Two, Ha-Ketubbah (The Marriage Certificate). The theater works with modern playwrights, too, having recently staged Dmitry Danilov’s Sasha, Hello!