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Moscow’s Maly Theatre opens its main historical stage until spring

The stage will remain open for several months before it is going to close for renovation once again late in April

© ITAR-TASS/Anton Novoderezhkin

MOSCOW, December 01, 7:31 /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow’s Maly Theatre will open its main stage on Sunday with Alexander Griboyedov’s play “Woe from Wit” staged by Sergei Zhenovach. The stage will remain open for several months before it is going to close for renovation once again late in April.

“We will open our main stage for five months. We are going to play on it until late April. After that, it will close again, this time until 2016, for overhaul renovation,” Tamara Mikhailova, the Maly Theatre’s general director, told journalists.

“We will go on stage on December 1. It is absolutely necessary for the theatre. Some plays had run on the main stage only for five or six months before the reconstruction started. Thank God, we have a wonderful subsidiary but the stage there is a little bit different. So, we cannot play all our performances there,” Yuri Solomin, the Maly Theatre’s artistic director, said.

The renovation of Russia’s oldest drama theatre started in the spring of 2013 and will pass in three stages. The most difficult works such as reinforcement of the basement have already been completed. The second stage is starting in December: separate parts of the old building are going to be renovated. All engineering systems, including heating and wiring, will be fixed during the final stage of repair works.

The cost of renovation is estimated at 6.5 billion roubles.

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