20 July 1944
The premiere of the concert play “The Seagull”
The production was created for the 40th anniversary of the death of Anton Chekhov. Nina Zarechnaya was played by Alisa Koonen, despite the fact that she was already 54 years old. She got that part for the first time, even though she dreamed of it since her youth. However, neither her age nor lack of makeup during the performance (such was the will of director Alexander Tairov) stopped Koonen from performing her part superbly. That performance was written about by the likes of Sviatoslav Richter.
World premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s opera “War and Peace” at the Leningrad Maly Opera Theatre.