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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: G-22

Last update of repository: 16 March 2020

Tsentral'naia notnaia biblioteka Gosudarstvennogo akademicheskogo Mariinskogo teatra


Previous names
1935–1992   Tsentral'naia muzykal'naia biblioteka Gosudarstvennogo akademicheskogo teatra opery i baleta im. S.M. Kirova
[Central Music Library of the S.M. Kirov State Academic Theater]
   Notnaia biblioteka Imperatorskikh teatrov
[Music Score Library of the Imperial Theaters]
early 18th c.   Notnaia kontora Imperatorskikh teatrov
[Music Score Office of the Imperial Theaters]
History
What is now one of the most important music libraries in Russia was originally founded in the first half of eighteenth century as the Music Score Office (later—the Music Score Library) of the Imperial Theaters. After the Revolution the library came under the Administration of Academic Theaters. In 1934, half of those library holdings were given to what had been the Mariinskii (Imperial Maria) Theater and the other half to the A.V. Lunacharskii Theater Library (G–21) and the Theater Museum. The following year, the Mariinskii Theater was renamed in honor of the slain CP leader S.M. Kirov, and its library was reorganized as the Central Music Library of the Kirov State Academic Theater, with holdings considerably broader than those of the theater itself. Before World War II, it acquired the holdings of the Music Score Library of the State People’s Home (Gosnardom), and later it acquired the collection of the Leningrad Conservatory Professor S.V. El'tsin and the music collection of the Military Medical Academy.
        The basic holdings of the library (ca. 500,000 volumes) include literature on music, musicology, and theater studies. Almost the entire music score collection consists of rare editions.
        The archival materials of the theater are held as part of the Division of Fonds and the Literary Division. As well as administrative records, these include collections of photographs, theater designs, posters, theater programs, and other materials relating to the theater productions.

N.B. The archive of the theater for the period 1917–1981 is retained in TsGALI SPb (D–18, fond 337).


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted