22 May 1931 on the Yarmarochnaya square of Novosibirsk (the Lenin square now) a festive meeting was held, dedicated to laying the “the first section” of The House of Science and Culture, which later became the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre. The final project of the theatre was created at the 2nd Schusev Moscow Architecture studio, and later in 1937 won the golden medal at the International Exposition in Paris.
“This is going to be a gigantic palace, the auditorium will be larger than the Mossovet square and will be able to fit the whole Bolshoi theatre with all its annexes – was written in “Vechernyaya Moskva” newspaper of that time. – It will not only become the largest theatre in Soviet Union, it will be the most ingenious and the most exquisite of them all.”
However, the construction of the theatre started in 1920s, when the new cultural and educational places were needed. The Moscow architect A. Z. Grinberg was charged to design the project and in 1930 he came up with the first variant of The House of Science and Culture.
Out of the whole project of the colossal body of public places, planned in constructionism terms, only the theatre part was accomplished. In 1930 the Novosibirsk architects T. Y. Bardt and M. I. Kurilko joined the project. They were creating the “highly mechanized planetary theatre” which could be transformed into a circus, a planetarium or a swimming pool for water mummery.
The declared cost was exceeded several-fold during the construction, so the authorities came to a conclusion, that the construction “started with an obvious malicious intent – to freeze the government funds for the object”. In 1937 the chief engineer S. A. Polygalin was repressed and a year later T. Y. Bardt was arrested.
In 1933 the constructivist forms of the theatre were criticized and later the competition “for planning a project for redecorating the front of the Novosibirsk theatre” was announced in the “Soviet Siberia” newspaper. The architect B. A. Gordeyev won the competion, his project went to the Schusev studio, where its final edition was made. In May 1937 the project was displayed at the Soviet section of the International Exposition in Paris and won the Grand-Prix.
“The news media of Great Britain, France, USA highly appreciated the work of the Soviet architects – the witnesses recall - but there was no lack of naysayers. German journalists, in particular, said it straight out that the Russians wouldn’t accomplish such enormous structure”.
