Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Moscow theatre/arts/music

The Bolshoi is the nicest, grandest theatre in Moscow, but I am not sure if it will be open in September (renovations will start sometime soon). www.bolshoi.ru Tickets for foreigners generally run $50 or so for reasonable seats--don't try to sit in the second row of the balconeys as you won't see anything. There are numerous smaller concert halls--I stumbled into one a block from the Bolshoi in 1999 that was presenting an opera that I had wanted to see since I was a child. You can look at www.TheMoscowTimes.com and for entertainment www.tmtmetropolis.ru/index.html (although the listings generally aren't more than a week out). Hotels can book the tickets to the Bolshoi, but are notorious at being clueless about the second-tier theatres beyond "folk shows". Some of the more obscure places are Scriabin Hall (home of Alex. Scriabin) which had concerts on Wednesday evenings, the Glinka Music Museum Hall, the Russian Army Theater (a great examble of Stalinist architecture), Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater. There is also a great concert hall in the Kremlin that has some good ballet (although usually with recorded music). Most of the secondary halls can be booked through street kiosks (good luck if you don't know any Russian) and are far lower priced than the Bolshoi (no foreigner/Russian tiering in the pricing). In Moscow you can use Patriashy Dom as a tour company: www.russiatravel-pdtours.netfirms.com They run many daily excursions at reasonable prices--their guides are very good, especially Felix Meltser (I took about 15 tours with him in the last few years). You can also hire their guides privately, and get the guide to assist you with purchasing tickets. Many of their programs are music-related (not concerts, but tours of sights related to great musicians). That all said, the Bolshoi is purely hit-or-miss with regards to both opera and ballet--the Mariinsky in St Petersburg led by Valery Gergiev has really taken the Bolshoi's place as Russia's premier music venue. Hopefully things will improve after the theatre's renovations.