About Us

"We have been partners for the past 18 years", said Anatoly Iksanov, Bolshoi General Director, "and over this period of time much has been achieved. I’m profoundly grateful to Samsung Electronics for its participation in the development of the classical arts in Russia. It is excellent that there are Companies which understand the importance of creating eternal cultural values and are ready to contribute in no small way to this noble goal".

"The Bolshoi Theatre is a unique institution and to over-assess its significance for world culture is impossible. To work together with its Company, to be involved in high art is a great honor for Samsung Electronics Rus", noted San Hong Lim.

Partnership History
Samsung Electronics has been working in Russia for 18 years and is actively engaged in the country's social, cultural and sporting life. The Company supports the State Hermitage, the Russian Union of Journalists, the Russian Olympic Committee and is co-founder of the Yasnaya Polyana Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Literary Prize.

Its Bolshoi Theatre collaboration began in 1991 and became one of its chief sponsorship projects aimed at the support of Russian culture. Samsung Electronics is one of the Bolshoi’s oldest partners. For many years it has provided the Bolshoi Theatre with technical support, supplying it with computer monitors, video cameras, audio systems, screens and projection equipment.

Its state-of-the-art technology is used in the Theatre's public spaces as well as in the scenography of its productions. For instance, in Act 2 of the Bolshoi's 2007 production of Carmen, audiences watch a bullfight relayed on Samsung screens.

The Company's support helps the Theatre to modernize its technological base, and also to create new costumes and sets and to organize appearances at the Bolshoi of world stars.

In 2005, the 15^th anniversary of Samsung Electronics and Bolshoi Theatre cooperation was celebrated by a revival of the legendary ballet Carmen Suite. The production which was revived for the Maya Plisetskaya 80^th jubilee celebration and presented during the Festival organized in honor of the great ballerina, later entered the Bolshoi Theatre repertoire.

Music Library
The aim of the project, which was begun in 2007, is to put in good order, classify and transfer into digital format the historical legacy of the unique Bolshoi Theatre of Russia music archive.

The Bolshoi Theatre Music Library contains about 50 000 documents, among them:
 - autograph manuscripts and signed copies  of  theatre music by composers of the 18^th,19^th and 20^th centuries;
 - music with autographs and notes by outstanding figures in the opera and ballet world – composers, conductors, choreographers, directors, singers, orchestra soloists - professionally linked  with the Bolshoi; 
 - music from the personal collections of  major figures in the Russian performing arts (Sergei Kusevitsky, Vyacheslav Suk, Mikhail Lentovsky, Alexander Melik-Pashayev).

However, until recently, the major part of this historically valuable music collection was totally unknown, and for decades collected dust on the shelves. Often even Company members, not to speak of the musical public at large, were totally ignorant of the treasures which lay, waiting to be discovered, in the Bolshoi Music Library.

In two years, the new staff members constituting the Archive department of the Music Library have made major improvements to the conditions in which the music manuscripts are kept, the repository has been thoroughly cleaned and overhauled, much has been accomplished (and this work is still in progress) in the establishment of a comprehensive bibliographic electronic catalogue. Lists of hundreds of particularly valuable documents in need of restoration have been drawn up.

Very soon, the first results of the work of the Music Library Archive staff will be made available to the public: on 22 October of this year, at a concert at the Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky House-Museum concert hall, in Klin, held under the auspices of the Heritage. Russian Music-World Culture Festival, works will be played from manuscripts preserved in the Bolshoi Theatre Music Library. Thus the compositions of Russian and foreign composers, who worked in Russia at the end of the 18^{th -} beginning of the 19^th centuries (Osip Kozlovsky, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, Catterino Cavos, Daniil Kashin, Nikolai Kubishta, F. Lefevre) will be given their first performance in 200 years (!) and unknown pages in the history of Russian music will be revealed.