Chernovtsy Ukrainian Musical and Dramatic Theater

(full name, O. Iu. Kobylianskaia Chernovtsy Ukrainian Musical and Dramatic Theater). The Chernovtsy Ukrainian Musical and Dramatic Theater was founded in 1931 in Kharkov as the Theater of the Revolution; its troupe included actors of the Kiev and Odessa theaters and, beginning in 1937, actors of the Kharkov Theater of Young Workers as well. Until 1940 it was called the Lenin Komsomol Theater. In 1940, after Northern Bucovina once again became part of the Ukraine, the theater was moved to Chernovtsy; during the Great Patriotic War, it performed in Dagestan, Tataria, the Mari ASSR, and elsewhere. In 1944 it returned to Chernovtsy. Since 1954 it has borne the name of O. Iu. Kobylianskaia.

The most important place in the theater’s repertoire is occupied by productions devoted to the past and present life of Bucovina. Known as the Bucovina Chronicle, these productions include Land (1947), On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs (1955), and The She-wolf (1963), all based on Kobylianskaia’s works, as well as Prokopenko’s Spring Flood (1949), Balkovenko and Miziun’s Luk’ian Kobylitsa (1955), The Steep Banks of the Dnestr, based on a work by Fed’kovich (1959), and Andrievich’s Lesia (1959).

The theater also stages classical works of Soviet and foreign drama. Among the productions of the 1960’s and 1970’s were Snigur’s The Passionate Hearts (1968), Kocherga’s The Diamond Millstone (1970), Stel’makh’s The Enchanted Windmill (1970) and A Song About Love (1972), Ostrovskii and Solov’ev’s Belugin’s Marriage (1973), Volodarskii’s Our Debts (1974), Krym’s Catch Your Train (1976), and Gel’man’s The Minutes of One Meeting (1976).

Among those who have been instrumental in the development of the theater are the directors M. S. Tereshchenko, V. S. Vasil’-ko, and B. A. Borin, the actors Iu. A. Velichko and V. K. Sokirko, and the composer B. V. Krizhanovskii. As of 1977, the theater troupe included People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR Iu. S. Kozakovskii, P. G. Mikhnevich, and A. Ia. Ianushevich and Honored Artists of the Ukrainian SSR A. N. Anan’ev, V. A. Zhikharskii, E. B. Zolotova, A. G. Litvinchuk, P. I. Nikitin, A. P. Ponomarenko, O. F. Rudnitskaia, N. G. Fialko, and A. V. Sheremet. The principal director is V. D. Opanasenko (since 1975), and the principal artist (stage designer), Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR V. V. Lassan (since 1966).

M. A. ANDRIEVICH