Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

A wide sweep of the Mariinsky Theatre's historic auditorium in St. Petersburg in 2014, from the gilded side boxes around to the painted curtain. The upholstery here is pale blue rather than red, which gives the gold a cooler, silvery shine you see nowhere else. Alberto Cavos, who also rebuilt Moscow's Bolshoi, designed the theater, and it opened on October 2, 1860, with Glinka's A Life for the Tsar. It is named after Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades had their first performances here, so Russian opera at the Mariinsky is about as close to the source as you can get.