Leyli and Majnun (opera)

Leyli and Majnun (Azerbaijani: Leyli və Məcnun) is an Azerbaijani opera in four acts by Uzeyir Hajibeyov.

It was first performed on 12 January 1908 at the Taghiyev Theatre in Baku. The opera is considered the Muslim world's first opera.

The first performance of the opera was led by Huseyn Arablinski and Hajibeyov himself played violin.

Uzeyir Hajibeyov and his brother Jeyhun Hajibeyov wrote the libretto for the opera based on Azerbaijani poet Muhammad Fizuli's poem Layla and Majnun; most parts of the poem remained unchanged.

Thus, the opera Leyli and Majnun became a founder of the unique new genre in musical culture of the world, which synthesizes oriental and European musical forms, resembling a dialogue of two musical cultures of East and West.

This opera has been shown more than 20,000 times at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater as well as in other countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Scene 1
Boys and girls go out of school. Beautiful Leyli and Geys love each other; they are chatting fondly, forgetting about others. But friends find Leyli's behavior very unethical and hastily take her away. Geys begs father to marry Leyli to him, without whom he can't live.

Scene 2
Leyli's parents have heard about Gey's love to Leyli and Leyli's mutual love to him. Girl's mother angrily reproaches her and Leyli listens to her sadly. She doesn't deny that she loves Geys more than anything in the world.

Geys's father comes to bring in Leyli and Geys together. Leyli's father sharply and decidedly refuses it: he will never decide to marry his daughter to Majnun (madman) – how everybody calls Geys, who becomes crazy by love.

Knowing about refusal, Geys frantically curses people and his sad destiny. He seeks for loneliness and takes himself off to desert.

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