Russia

Russian composers include Glinka, the group known as the Mighty Five — Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Cui — as well as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The Russian Musical Society, founded in 1859, opened the country's first conservatories in St Petersburg and Moscow. The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow dates its company to a licence of 1776 and its main building to 1825. The Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, opened in 1860, premiered Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in 1874 and Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades in 1890. After a fire in 1853, the Bolshoi building was reconstructed and reopened in 1856.