Level Up Your Russian: Listen to Lectures and Watch Theatre Performances Online

Moscow is known for its numerous museums and theatres, but all of them are currently on lockdown. Their staff don’t sit idle, though. They organize regular lectures and broadcasts. Most of the events are in Russian: it's a good way to immerse yourself in the culture and improve your language skills.

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Museum Night

The third weekend of May is traditionally the Museum Night in Moscow. This year, on May 16, the project will be held online. Museums are offering virtual competitions, lectures and excursions.

Tretyakov Gallery is welcoming everyone to a quiz. Get a team together, register in advance, and start at 7.30 pm. Prepare for the game watching videos on the gallery’s YouTube channel. The game will be followed by an online concert of classical music.

The All-Russian Decorative Art Museum offers a lecture on an unlikely but curious phenomenon that evolved in the Russian arts and crafts in the mid-20^th century, when aircrafts and spacecrafts came to traditional miniature lacquer painting. The lecture will be broadcast on the museum’s YouTube channel and in social media at noon.

The Museum of Cosmonautics has joined the State Museum of Sports to organize an online meeting with cosmonaut Fedor Yurchikhin and football player Alexey Smertin, who will answer some frequently asked questions about sports and space. They will talk about how cosmonauts exercise in space and how they recover after the flights. The broadcast will start on VK at 3 pm.

At 8 pm, employees of the Museum of Cosmonautics will look at popular films about space and comment what is real and what is not in them. The broadcast will be available on VK and on the museum website.

The Museum of Moscow has joined 25 museums across the globe for a Museum Travel Night. Museum directors, curators, and guides from America to Australia and from Moscow to Vladivostok have recorded short videos with their signature exhibits related to urban legends and historic moments. The live broadcast starts at 7 pm on the Museum of Moscow Instagram.

Theatres

If you are into opera and ballet, you have probably already checked the Bolshoi Theatre’s YouTube channel, where they broadcast recordings of the theatre’s best performances in high audio and video quality. The broadcasts are announced on the theatre’s Instagram account.

Many drama theatres are also making available their performances online. Here are some highlights:

Moscow Art Theatre on Facebook.

Vakhtangov Theatre on its website.

Gogol Centre on YouTube and its website. Announcements on Instagram.

Pushkin Theatre on YouTube and Facebook.

Maly Theatre on YouTube.