The Grand Dramatic Theatre (Bolshoy Dramaticheskiy teatr). A Collection of Articles. Leningrad, 1935. In Russian

Большой Драматический Театр. Сборник статей. Государственный Большой драматический театр им. М. Горького и Государственная академия искусствознания. Ответственный редактор С. Безпрозванный. Художественный и технический редактор А. Кроленко. Художник В. Белкин.
Ленинград: Издание Государственного Большого драматического театра имени М. Горького, 1935.
[4], 385, [4] с., 61 л. ил., цв. ил.
Тираж 5 000 экз.
Обычный формат, в издательском коленкоровом переплете.
Состояние: хорошее. Коленкоровый переплет с заметным выцветанием и разводами от влаги по правой части верхней крышки и по левой части нижней крышки, а также по верхнему обрезу. Потертости коленкора и углов, легкие потертости корешка. Блок крепкий, текст и иллюстрации полные, цветные вклейки яркие.
***
The Grand Dramatic Theatre. A Collection of Articles. The State Maxim Gorky Grand Dramatic Theatre and the State Academy of Arts Studies. Editor-in-chief S. Bezprozvanny. Art and technical editor A. Krolenko. Artist V. Belkin.
Leningrad: Edition of the Gorky Grand Dramatic Theatre, 1935.
[4], 385, [4] pp., 61 plates of illustrations, including color plates.
Print run 5,000 copies.
Standard octavo, in publisher's cloth binding.
Condition: good. Cloth binding with noticeable fading and water stains along the right side of the upper cover. Text block firm, text and illustrations complete, color plates vivid.

The Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre, founded in Petrograd in 1919 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, Alexander Blok, and Maria Andreyeva, became one of the central institutions of early Soviet theatrical culture, and this 1935 volume — issued jointly by the theatre and the State Academy of Arts Studies on the eve of its sixteenth season — is the first comprehensive scholarly history of its work. The collection assembles essays by the leading Leningrad theatre historians and critics of the period: Evgeny Kuznetsov on the founding of the theatre, Stefan Mokulsky on its engagement with the classical repertoire, Alexei Gvozdev and Adrian Piotrovsky on its expressionist productions, Konstantin Tverskoy on Soviet dramaturgy, Anatoly Butskoy on music in the dramatic theatre, and S. Abashidze on the audience, with extensive appendices documenting the company's chronicle, personnel, and repertoire from 1919 to 1935. The volume is also a striking visual document of the Soviet stage, illustrated with sixty-one plates including color reproductions of designs by Shchuko, Annenkov, Belkin, Levin, Tyrsa, and other leading scenographers. The book has additional poignancy as a near-final monument of the brilliant Leningrad school of theatre studies before the Great Terror: Piotrovsky and Tverskoy were both arrested and executed in 1937, and the volume preserves their mature critical voices on the very threshold of their disappearance.