St Petersburg City Guide - Culture

St Petersburg has a rich cultural tradition of literature and music. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich all lived and worked here. During the transitional years of post-Soviet Russia, the removal of state subsidies hit the cultural life of the city hard, with many of the prestigious companies having to spend much time abroad. Theatre and film, which do not travel so easily, have been worst hit. However, sponsorships by local and national businesses have breathed new life into many of St Petersburg's cultural entities. Opera and ballet have long been the bedrock of St Petersburg's cultural tradition. The world-renowned Vaganova Ballet School was founded here in 1738, while the wealthy and cultured classes of 19th-century St Petersburg strutted their stuff at the opera.

Fifteen-day programmes (in Russian) are posted in the windows of ticketing venues. Tickets for popular venues are limited and often the best seats are sold through hotels and tourist agencies. The cheapest deals, however, are obtained by going direct to the venue or the theatre ticket kiosks or kassas located throughout the city. The largest are at Nevsky prospekt 42 and in the pavilion at the corner of Nevsky prospekt and Mikhailovskaya ulitsa. They are open 1000-1900. Foreign visitors officially pay much more than Russians and although one can ask a local to buy the ticket, it is worth remembering that a zealous ticket collector at the venue may still charge the difference or throw the offending foreigner out.

The St Petersburg Times (website: www.sptimes.ru) provides up-to-date cultural listings that are published in English. Casual dress is the norm for bars and clubs, but you should smarten up if you plan a visit to the theatre, ballet or to a classical concert.

Music: The Shostakovich Philharmonia (website: www.philharmonia.spb.ru) is the home of the traditional St Petersburg Academic Symphonic Philarmonic Orchestra. Touring orchestras also perform here. The acoustics at Glinka Maly Zal (Small Hall), Nevsky prospekt 30 (tel: (812) 312 4585 or 311 8333 or 571 8333), are better than in the vast Bolshoi Zal (Main Hall), Mikhailovskaya ulitsa 2 (tel: (812) 710 4085 or 312 9871). Please note: The Philharmonia is closed for renovation for the 2006/2007 season. Concerts that would ordinarily be held in the Glinka Maly Zal or the Bolshoi Zal will take place at various other halls, so check the website, or the St Petersburg Times, for detailed information. St Petersburg State Capella, Naberezhnaya Reki Moika 20 (tel: (812) 314 1153), has a small concert hall for classical choral music, small orchestras and solo performances. The house soloists sing at the Sunday Holy Liturgy, starting at 1000, in the Preobrazhensky Cathedral, Preobrazhenskaya ploschad 1 (tel: (812) 272 3662). Terem-Kvartet (tel: (812) 110 4068) is a lively company that presents unusual interpretations of classical works and opera, played on traditional Russian instruments, at various venues. The opera at the exquisite Mariinsky Theatre, Teatralnaya ploschad 1 (tel: (812) 326 4141; website: www.mariinsky.ru/en), has scarcely changed in a century. If tickets for the Mariinsky are unavailable, the Mussorgsky Opera and Ballet Theatre, Iskusstv ploschad 1 (tel: (812) 595 4284 or 4307), is the next best venue for classical performances. Lively folk music, including Cossack and Russian dance, is performed daily at 2030, at the Nicholaievsky Palace, Truda ploschad 4 (tel: (812) 312 2600).

Theatre: The Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre, Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki 65 (tel: (812) 310 9242 or 0401), presents classical performances of traditional Russian drama. Pazi, the director of the Kommissarzevskaya Theatre, Italyanskaya ulitsa 19 (tel: (812) 311 3102), noted for its colourful costumes and innovative staging, won an international prize for The Lovers' Suicide on the Island of Skynet, based on a Japanese stageplay by Tikamatsu. Buff, Narodnaya ulitsa 1 (tel: (812) 446 6767), has three performance areas, presenting variety acts and improvised comedy.

Dance: The Mariinsky Company (formerly the famous Kirov Ballet Company) nurtured greats such as Nureyev and Pavlova. Ballet in St Petersburg remains conservative, with a repertoire of classics. The Mariinsky, which performs only classical ballet, has the most scarce and expensive tickets in St Petersburg. The company performs at the Mariinksy Theatre, Teatralnaya ploschad 1 (tel: (812) 326 4141, website: www.mariinsky.ru/en). The director of Theatre of Ballet, Boris Eifman, enraged classical ballet fans with controversial interpretations of Tchaikovsky. This modern troupe often appears at Oktyabrskaya Concert Hall, Ligovsky prospekt 6 (tel: (812) 275 1273).

Film: Foreign films, mostly American, are clumsily dubbed into Russian, although there has been a resurgence of good Russian films and some Soviet  classics to be found. The St Petersburg Times (website: www.sptimes.ru) has listings of these. The Crystal Palace, Nevsky prospekt 72 (tel: (812) 272 2382) screens fairly recent foreign films in the original language, while the Avrora, Nevsky prospekt 60 (tel: (812) 315 5254), shows recent American films dubbed into Russian as well as new Russian films

Anna Karenina (1935), starring Greta Garbo and directed by Edmund Golding, was set in St Petersburg, as was Eisenstein's October (1927). Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) charts the same historic events through the eyes of the journalist, John Reed.

Literary Notes: Pushkin, the giant of Russian literature, is widely revered by Russians, many of whom know his poetry by heart. His poem, ‘The Bronze Horseman', brings the famous statue of Peter the Great to terrifying life, pursuing the hapless Yevgeny through the streets of St Petersburg.

Tolstoy's dislike of St Petersburg, detailed in his sharp insight into the upper ranks of society in Anna Karenina (1875-77), is matched by Dostoevsky's devastating descriptions of poverty and despair in the slums, in Crime and Punishment (1866). He wrote of ‘this place, with its tattered population, its dirty and nauseous courtyards and numerous alleys'.

The novelist Nikolai Gogol lived at Malaya Morskaya ulitsa 17, just off the Nevsky prospekt. He wrote a novel named after that street, which he described as ‘the jewel of our capital'. He also describes the poverty: ‘... in the earliest morning all St Petersburg smells of hot freshly baked bread and is filled with old women in ragged gowns, making their raids on the churches and on compassionate passers-by.'

By the time the journalist, John Reed, was chronicling the events of the 1917 October Revolution, in his book Ten Days That Shook The World (1919), hunger still stalked St Petersburg: ‘...the crowds thickened towards gloomy evening, pouring in slow voluble tides up and down the Nevsky, fighting for newspapers. Mysterious individuals circulated among the shivering women, who waited in the queue, long cold hours for bread and milk, whispering that the Jews had cornered the food supply.'