The story
In 1897 Riga's city council decided that it was not enough to have just one theatre in Riga. Riga's first theatre was the German Theatre, currently the Opera House. A competition was held to choose the design of the new building. The Augusts Reinbergs project "Dum spiro, spero" ("While I breathe, I hope") won and construction began, mainly funded by local Russian merchants and some nobility. The theatre was opened to the public on 14 September 1902 as Riga's Second (Russian) theatre (Rīgas 2. pilsētas (krievu) teātris) and held both theatre and opera performances. Although this was Russian language theatre, by 1917 Riga Latvian Society was renting the premises to hold plays in Latvian.
During the First World War the theatre was evacuated, but by 1918 it was already back in business, and on 15 October staged Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. Just over a month later, Latvia declared its independence, with the declaration being read from the theatre's stage. The only remaining photograph from this historic event was taken in the theatre's main hall.
In 1919, during a brief period of Bolshevik rule, the makeshift government named it the Workers' Theatre (Strādnieku teātris), but it became the Latvian National Theatre soon after and on 30 November the official opening took place with a staging of Rūdolfs Blaumanis "Ugunī" ("In Fire"). The creative program was authored by Jānis Akurāters, a Latvian writer, then head of the Art department of the Ministry of Education.
After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, the name of the theatre was deemed too nationalistic, so it was renamed to Riga's Dramatic Theatre (Rīgas Drāmas teātris), only to restore the previous name in 1988, 3 years before Latvia regained its independence.
The current managing director of the theatre is Ojārs Rubenis and the artistic director is Edmunds Freibergs.
From Wikipedia’s article on Latvian National Theatre, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3