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Kirov Theatre. 1944
Already by spring 1944 in Leningrad they had begun to restore the Kirov Theatre. In Perm, this news was passed on from one person to the next amid great joy. “We’ll be going home soon! The theatre is already registering passports for its staff and dependants and telegrams are flying in from Leningrad: ‘See you soon!’ At production conferences of the various departments the repertoire with which the company can return to Leningrad is being discussed. Ilya Shlepyanov, who was invited to join the theatre as a guest stage director to replace Leonid Baratov who has departed for Moscow, proposes taking the scale of the Leningrad stage as a guideline for the new production of the opera. Finally the news arrived that the theatre building in Leningrad will be ready no earlier than 1 May. <...> On the doors of our building there is a huge poster saying that Leningrad needs workers, stove-repairers, painter-decorators and joiners – all are needed for Leningrad which is being rebuilt.
“It seemed that everything in the theatre was upside-down – people were no longer walking about, they were flying on the wings of a dream that was now so close.”*
* M. Frangopulo. The State Academic Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre, Recipient of the Order of Lenin// Leningrad Theatres during World War II. Moscow-Leningrad; Iskusstvo, 1948. P. 90