Transpolar Theater

From the history section on the theater's website (my own shoddy translation):

Solzhenitsyn called the Cultural Education Section theaters “Serf Theaters”. And indeed, within the theaters, culture was built by claw-hands. If some cadres were not sufficient, someone in the camp management chose artists from among those living in freedom. The director P. V. Varpakhovsky remembers how, while working on the Verdi opera “La Traviatta”, the camp boss for some reason decided to hold the premier on March 8^th, and he expressed alarm at the sound of the choir. “ 'Don’t worry,' comforted his benefactress, a music lover, 'In a week we will have the whole academic capella from Estonia.' ” There is no question that the arrested singers imbued the choir with tragic pathos…

The story on the theater's website is interesting, always trying to balance between telling the story of an incomprehensible human tragedy, and the story of the birth of a creative project that continues to this day.