Azerbaijani opera
| Music of Azerbaijan | |
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| General topics | |
| Genres | |
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| Traditional music | |
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| Music festivals | |
| Music media | Medeniyyet TV |
| Nationalistic and patriotic songs | |
| National anthem | March of Azerbaijan |
Opera in Azerbaijan has a history dating back to the 19th century Russian Empire.
The emergence of opera and ballet in Azerbaijan is associated with the Imperial Russian period of Azerbaijani history when Azerbaijanis became exposed to European music traditions first-hand. The very first documented performance of an opera in Baku took place in May 1889 when Alexey Verstovsky's opera Askold's grave was staged at a circus arena in Baku (on the site of the current Azerbaijan Carpet Museum building), accompanied by the folk choir of Dmitry Agrenev-Slavyanski.
In early 1900s, opera troupes toured Baku on a yearly basis (except 1901 and 1913), featuring prominent singers of the time such as Natalia Ermolenko-Yuzhina and Antonina Nezhdanova.
The Opera Theater in Baku was built in 1911.
The first opera by an Azerbaijani composer premiered three years earlier, in 1908.
Leyli and Majnun (1908) by Uzeyir Hajibeyov was the first creation in the opera genre not only in Azerbaijan, but also in the whole Muslim world. It was followed by the operas Sheikh Sanan (1909), Rustam and Zohrab (1910), Shah Abbas and Khurshid Banu (1912), Asli and Karam (1912) and Harun and Leyla (1915) which were written, but never staged. The The Cloth Peddler musical comedy written in 1913 was Hajibeyov's most popular operetta. It is considered to be the most well-known work of Hajibeyov in the former Soviet Union. The Cloth Peddler was translated into Russian, Tatar, Chagatai, Persian and Turkish soon after its premiere in 1913. Later this operetta was translated into Polish, Bulgarian, Chinese, Arabic, French and other languages.
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Wikipedia