From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 5/30/2005 11:04 AM

Fire Ravages Newly Repaired Theater

Monday, May 30, 2005
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer
    

Igor Tabakov / MT

Workers on Sunday demolishing the parts of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater that were destroyed in a blaze early Friday.

A devastating fire roared through the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater on Friday, badly damaging the stage, the auditorium and part of the roof only three months before the theater was to reopen following a major renovation.

No one was injured in the early- morning blaze, the second in two years at the sprawling theater at 17 Ulitsa Bolshaya Dmitrovka, which is a few minutes' walk from the Mayor's Office on Tverskaya Ulitsa, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said by telephone.

More than 1,500 square meters were ravaged by the fire, including the rebuilt stage and the auditorium, Beltsov said.

The 19th-century foyer, the oldest part of the theater, and a new multimillion-dollar annex were untouched.

Firefighters initially blamed a short circuit but later said they were also checking other leads, including a possible failure to comply with fire safety regulations and arson.

"Several causes are being considered. One of them is connected with a [possible plot] to purposely eliminate the building," Andrei Stanovenko, a Moscow fire official, said in televised remarks.

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the fire as well as for a power outage that struck parts of Moscow and four nearby regions last week. (Story, Page 3.)

Culture and Press Minister Alexander Sokolov announced an urgent appeal to raise funds to repair the theater, which is now not expected to reopen before winter.

Theater director Vladimir Urin said guards made their rounds of the premises some 20 minutes to 30 minutes before the estimated 3:30 a.m. start of the fire but did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

Urin said the fire began in the main hall. "High temperatures caused the balcony in the hall and some ceilings to collapse," Urin said, Interfax reported.

Some 200 firefighters battled the blaze for five hours, and a helicopter was called in to fight the flames from the air. Tall buildings around the theater, however, prevented the helicopter from getting very close.

The fire shocked theater staff. "It will take time to estimate the scale of the damage," Irina Chernomorova, an official with the theater administration, told reporters outside the theater. Her eyes were teary and her voice trembled as she thanked the firefighters for their quick arrival and well-organized efforts.

The theater's freshly renovated pink facade looked almost untouched by the blaze except for a long horizontal crack just under the roof.

Builders on Sunday were demolishing the burned parts of the building.

The first fire took place in June 2003, only two months before the theater closed for a two-year, $170 million reconstruction that tripled its space. Mainly affected were costume rooms, and dozens of outfits were destroyed. Theater employees at the time expressed relief that the fire had happened before the renovation.

The theater, formed in the 1941 merger of opera and dance troupes headed by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, had undergone its last renovation more than 50 years earlier. It is based in an estate first built in the 18th century.

Friday's fire occurred only two days after a blaze raged through another Moscow theater. On Wednesday, the day of the power outage, a fire blamed on a short circuit damaged the Russian Army Theater.

During the two-year renovation, the dance and opera troupes at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater had been performing in other Moscow theaters, most recently on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater. In return, the theater had agreed to lend its renovated stage to some large Bolshoi Theater productions after the Bolshoi itself closes for a three-year renovation in July.

"Our colleagues in this theater were so anxious to return to their home stage after the renovation. ... In any case, this is terrible tragedy," Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov told Interfax.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/05/30/001.html