Great Hall of the St Petersburg Conservatory

The St Petersburg Conservatory took over the Bolshoi Theatre on Teatralnaya Square, granted to it for permanent use by imperial command and rebuilt to a plan approved in 1891. The hall was inaugurated on 21 November 1896 with a Russian historical concert, and the Imperial Russian Musical Society moved its symphony meetings into it for that season, complaining at once of the acoustics: one critic called the room a long trumpet in which the music could not be heard. The first performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's edition of Boris Godunov was given here on 28 November, a week after the opening.