Scope and Content Note
The Houston Maples Family Collection contains materials related to performances of opera, theater, and ballet in Moscow. This includes programs, photographs, books, and videotapes related to dance productions at the Bolshoi Theatre that were gathered by the Mapleses between 1945 and 1983. The bulk of these items date from 1946 and 1947. The photographs and programs include traditional Bolshoi productions of Marius Petipa’s choreographies, such as Don Quixote, Raymonda, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, as well as the pioneering Soviet ballet classics Flames of Paris (Vainonen) and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (Zakharov). The book series represents material on ballet schools, theaters, opera ballet, analysis of different productions, ballerinas, and dance theory. This includes titles such as Ballets de Moscou by the Ballet Company of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre, as well as The Bolshoi Theatre Ballet. Other ballets represented in the collection include Serge Prokofiev’s Cinderella (Zakharov) and Romeo and Juliet (Lavrovsky).