Odessa's first theatre (called the City Theatre) was built on the location of the current Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre and opened on 10 February 1810. The original design, created by the Italian architect Francesco Frapolli, was later modified by the
French architect
Jean-François Thomas de Thomon who also designed St. Petersburg's Old Stock Exchange. The main entrance with its colonnade faced the sea. There was no
foyer. Historian Charles King explains that one of the medical inspectors in
Odessa was also the owner of the Odessa Theatre. When ticket sales were low, he would announce the discovery of an infection among newly arrived passengers and ordered them to be quarantined at their own cost. The expenses of the
lazaretto, where the passengers stayed, would be used to hire a major performer for the theatre. On the night of 2 January 1873, the building was gutted by fire. A fund raising campaign began immediately for the purpose of reconstructing the building. The city announced an international contest for the best theatre design. Forty designs were submitted, but none was chosen. Finally, the project was drafted along the lines of Dresden
Semperoper built in 1878, with its nontraditional foyer following the curvatures of auditorium. Two Viennese architects,
Ferdinand Fellner and
Hermann Helmer began to construct the larger replacement in 1883. The foundation stone was laid on 16 September 1884. On 1 October 1887, the theatre was completed, costing 1,300,000
rubles to build. It was named the Odessa City Theatre. The theatre was the first building in Odesa to employ the
Edison Company with electric illumination. To keep theatre patrons comfortable in the summers, workers would lower wagonloads of ice and straw down a 35-foot shaft, then would carry it through a tunnel to a basement beneath the hall, where cool air rose up from vents beneath the seats. There is a story that, when the Odesa people learned that the construction cost 1.3 million gold rubles, they gasped, but when they saw the new theatre, they gasped again, this time in admiration. During
World War II,
Nikita Khrushchev, concerned about the condition of the city, visited Odesa immediately after the German army was ousted from the city.
Khrushchev reported that only one corner of the building had been damaged by an enemy shell. The theatre was remodelled in the 1960s. ==Construction==