What was the Bolshoi Theater at the time it was being built - a temple, a nativity scene, maybe something else? When and why did basements with a depth of 27 meters appear in this building? After all, this is the level of the modern metro, and the history of the theater has been introduced since 1776. Even if this building, or rather, the supporting structures partly remained from 1780 from the old Peter's theater Maddox, and partly from the Bove Theater in 1825. Nowhere on the plans and drawings of this theater do we see basements. In general, who drew these plans and when? How was this theater illuminated in the early 19th century - with candles or kerosene? Can you imagine what the stench must be from thousands of kerosene lamps? And what kind of soot? How did people not suffocate in this room? In the middle of the century, the theater switches to gas lighting. Very interesting,Where were the gas tanks or gas tanks for lighting this theater? What about heating? After all, this huge room had to be heated in winter. The spectators were not in fur coats or sheepskin coats. Do you remember where the theater begins? From the hanger!
Let's try to solve these and other mysteries of the Bolshoi Theater!
On the plans and on the longitudinal sections of this theater, whether it is Maddox's Petrine Theater from his 1997 album, whether it is the Bolshoi Petrovsky Theater already rebuilt according to Bove's design in 1825, as well as the Bolshoi Theater rebuilt by Kavos in 1856 - nowhere on these drawings and plans the Bolshoi Theater has no basements, which is very surprising.
For example, here is a fragment of a longitudinal section of the Bolshoi Stone Theater in St. Petersburg:
Here we see basement floors, but in the Moscow theater, according to the drawings and plans, there are no basements.
Remember what we are told about heating: all the stoves were in the basements. It was in these basements that there was something like a boiler house. Coal was dumped there, firewood was brought, and thus such large premises as churches, palaces and theaters were heated. But at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, apparently, it was not like that. Apparently, firewood and coal were brought in through the main entrance? Let's see how this theater was generally heated in winter.
Promotional video:
Here we have an image of the Petrovsky theater in its first form, in 1780. This is the so-called old Petrine Maddox Theater. I cannot find a single chimney in this picture. Maybe, of course, this is just an unfortunate angle, but we have other plans, and they have no pipes, no chimneys.
And here is a longitudinal section:
Here we were drawn piles, parts of the foundation - one might say, the theater in section. But again there were no signs of pipes, chimneys, or stoves themselves. Of course, maybe he somehow burned himself in black, and all the smoke came out through the window. Well, in that case, it is no wonder that the Bolshoi Theater survived so many fires!
Here is the plan of the already rebuilt theater, designed by Beauvais in 1825:
There are no pipes!
It's amazing, because we understand that the plan should have a detailed display of all, even the smallest elements of architecture. I think engineering communications should have been displayed here - toilet and plumbing, heating, including stoves and chimneys. According to this plan, we cannot even understand whether there was ventilation there. And how can it be that we have several design drawings from the Bolshoi Theater. Where is the rest of the documentation? After all, there should be exact drawings, but they are not!
But where did they go? Burned out, of course! They can no longer be attributed to the fire of 1812, since the theater was built in 1825, but they will tell us: the theater burned in 1853, and all the drawings were kept in the theater. They belong there!
Based on these plans, we can say for sure that there were no basements, especially 27 meters deep under this theater, and we are going down to the depths of the Moscow metro to the premises located under the Bolshoi Theater.
Pay attention to the inscription that the buffets of the Beethoven Hall are located on the third floor, and all the toilets are located below. You yourself can see the length of the flights of stairs between floors. And the underground floors in the Bolshoi Theater are not 2.75 m high, as in your apartment. The ceilings are much higher here.
The Bolshoi Theater store, wardrobe and toilets are located on the ground floor. The Beethoven Hall itself is located on the second floor. You yourself can estimate the height of the ceilings in this room. But as you already understood, this is not the lowest floor: under the Beethoven Hall there are also buffets of the Beethoven Hall. I tried to calculate the depth of these structures using a barometer, but this was not so necessary here, since the guide of our excursion announced the official figures: the depth of these rooms is 27 meters. According to her, the basements were dug during the reconstruction of the theater in 2005-2007, but it is impossible to get acquainted with the technical documentation: all of it disappeared somewhere, disappeared, destroyed. That in 1825 there are no drawings and plans, that in 2020 the same thing, documents have disappeared somewhere. Nothing changes!
That is, we are told that until 2005 there were no basements in the building of the Bolshoi Theater. But you needed some kind of technical premises that were located underground? It was necessary to locate stoves for heating somewhere, supplies of coal or firewood, because somewhere there should have been toilets in this theater?
Now these toilets are located on the minus first floor, but where in the Bolshoi Theater were these toilets at the end of the 18th century, if these underground minus the first floors were not on the plans? But the toilets should have been, all the bohemians of Moscow gathered here, they drank and ate during intermissions, there were banquet halls. And where did they go before the wind? Well, not in the yard in the winter, running to the toilet in the yard is not the most enjoyable activity, believe my experience! I think that it is useless to ask this question to our historians and art critic, they will not answer about the toilets. It is from such details that all this huge lie looms.
Let's talk about the lighting of the Bolshoi Theater. To illuminate such a theater, you need either a huge number of candles, which must be lit simultaneously during the intermission, and extinguished when the performance begins. If these were kerosene lamps, with so many of them, I think it would be impossible to breathe in this theater, because in addition to soot, oxygen was burned. After the performance, people would leave with a sore head. The famous chandelier in the auditorium, eight and a half meters high and weighing two and a half thousand kilograms, was installed in 1863. Then it was equipped with gas jets and it happened that glass shades burst from heat and fragments flew on the heads of the audience. And after 30 years, the chandelier was modernized, the gas lamps were replaced with electric ones, and the wires were laid through pipes through which the gas flowed. I could not see the large chandelier of the auditorium up close, but the lamps in the foyer, as we are told, retained the gas valves. Look, I photographed it, they really look like cranks that open and shut off the gas.
When did gas lighting appear in Moscow? Previously, natural gas was not used, but this gas was obtained by converting coal at high-temperature heating from 1000 to 2000 degrees Celsius. We know the Moscow gas plant, which was opened in 1866 for just such a conversion of coal into gas. But as I just told you, the chandelier in the Bolshoi Theater was equipped for gas lighting already in 1863, that is, three years before the foundation of the first Moscow gas plant!
I think that if our story were true, there would not be so many silly inconsistencies. And now the history of any building, which is about two hundred years old, presents us with a lot of surprises.