Library of the State Academic Mariinsky Theater

Initially - the Library of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters. In Soviet times - the Central Music Library (CMB).

For 2021, the library was given the status of a departmental archive and de facto it was withdrawn from the circle of archives in which musicologists can work. Even the library catalog is not available to researchers. For decades, Russian musicians have been deprived of the opportunity to perform and record works of the first Russian composers. The rules set in the library are unexplained obscurantism.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a certain number of copies disappeared from the library, although they appear in the library catalog. They may have been taken abroad. Among other things, the score of the melodrama to the music of Nikolai Pomeranian "Pygmalion" disappeared.

Thanks to this archive, some works of Russian composers of the 18th century have been preserved, including:

• music of the first opera with the Russian text "Cephalus and Prokris"

• music by Eustigneus Fomin to the melodrama "Orpheus and Eurydice."