St Petersburg Culture

Theaters, Concert Organizations and Cinemas

St. Petersburg is rightfully regarded as one of the most important centers of theater arts in Russia and Europe. Over 100 different theater institutions are located in the city; about 30 of them are state owned. The Committee for Culture supervises 23 theaters representing nearly all theater genres: music, drama and puppetry.

The performances of Saint Petersburg’s theaters have won numerous awards at national and international festivals, including the most prestigious Russian theater award — the “Golden Mask”.

Beginning in 1996 every theater season has ended with the presentation of St. Petersburg’s theatrical award “Gold Sofit”.

The city regularly holds contests to encourage enlargement of the repertoires of its theaters, to discover new talents among theater directors and new forms of dramatic arts, and to support non-governmental theater institutions.

* Statistics are given for institutions supervised by the Committee for Culture

In St. Petersburg there are about 100 concert and philharmonic institutions among which are over 68 music clubs.

The Committee for Culture supervises 14 city concert organizations.

The most prominent among them are Glinka Academic Capella, and “Peterburg Concert”; orchestras: St. Petersburg state Academic Symphony Orchestra, Vasiliy Andreev State Academic Russian Orchestra, “Klassika” Orchestra; Ice Theaters: Ballet on Ice and Children’s Ice Theater; concert halls: Oktyabrsky Big Concert Hall and Smolny Cathedral.

The Committee for Culture implements a number of programs designed to increase the cinema’s popularity and to support national cinematography and children’s cinema in particular, as well as technical modernization programs for movie theaters.