“Zvartnots Conjunct with Colosseum”: From Tamanyan’s People’s House to the Theater of Opera and Ballet

Abstract

The article examines one of the most enigmatic constructions of Alexander Tamanyan – the People’s House, which was the basis of the current Opera and Ballet Theater in Yerevan. The People’s House was strictly criticized by young proletarian architects, the Armenian representatives of the revolutionary Culture One – the author follows the concept proposed by V. Paperny, according to which in the early 1930s the “spreading” egalitarian Culture One replaced with the Stalin-era Culture Two, characterized by “hardening” and hierarchy. It is shown that Tamanyan’s People's House was horizontally consonant with Culture One, however, it did not imply an egalitarian proletarian daily life, but a nationwide festival in the spirit of carnival festivities studied by M. Bakhtin and Ur-festival reconstructed by the author. In the vertical plane, People’s House was likened to the best achievements of medieval Armenian church architecture, in particular, the 7th-century temple of Zvartnots. Tamanyan generally conceived his People’s House as a conjunction of the Armenian Zvartnots with the Roman Coliseum, which should have been constructively realized by the closed part of the People’s House (the Tamanyan’s Culture Two) and its open part, which, together with the horizontal function of the closed part, provided the festive Culture One. A comparison is made between the classic Stalinist Culture Two, the planned Palace of Soviets in Moscow, and Tamanyan’s Culture Two, which was conceived before Stalin’s Culture Two and was combined with Culture One. Figuratively defining the idea of his project, the architect said that he wanted to combine the Armenian temple of the VII century Zvartnots with the Roman Colosseum. After the death of Tamanyan, the construction of the People’s House was continued by his son, who “edited” the building of his father, depriving it of the festive features of Culture One. Tamanyan traced this festive principle to the pagan temple of song and love located, as he believed, on the very spot where he built his People’s House. Despite being deprived as a result of reconstruction, festivity nevertheless manifests itself, but in the late 1980s and in the form of a political festival of unity. The article also outlines other possible developments of the space of the Opera building, which were laid down by Tamanyan in the mythology of his architectural work.

Keywords

• people’s house
• culture one
• culture two
• tamanyan
• constructivism
• palace of councils
• political festival