Yerevan Opera Theater, Opera house in Kentron District, Yerevan, Armenia
The Yerevan Opera Theater is a building by Alexander Tamanian with two halls: the 1,120-seat Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall and the 1,400-seat Alexander Spendiaryan Opera and Ballet Hall. Its foyer walls are faced with light Agveran marble, and the upper balcony is divided into two tiers.
The opera company was founded on 13 May 1932 by decision of the Armenian Sovnarkom, and its first premiere, Spendiarian's Almast, took place on 20 January 1933. The present building by Alexander Tamanian was completed in 1940 with a 1,120-seat hall. It was named after Spendiarian in 1938, received the Order of Lenin in 1939, became academic in 1957, and reopened in 1980 after a reconstruction led by Gevorg Tamanian.
The theatre opened on 20 January 1933 with Alexander Spendiaryan's opera Almast, and it has carried his name since 1938. Its square outside holds monuments to poet Hovhannes Tumanyan and to Spendiaryan himself, and the adjacent park's Swan Lake, shaped like Lake Sevan, has a statue of composer Arno Babajanian on its bank.
The theater sits in central Yerevan and is easily reached on foot or by public transport from most parts of the city. Performances take place throughout the year, so checking ahead helps you find shows that match your visit dates.
Before the theater rose, its plot held the Getsemane Chapel, a small single-nave Armenian church built on the site of an older church destroyed in Yerevan's 1679 earthquake. Architect Alexander Tamanian had it dismantled in 1929 and its stones numbered for relocation, but the rebuilding never happened: in 1932 the stones were reused for the Workers' House on Byron Street. The chapel's surrounding cemetery, with 17th- and 18th-century tombstones, disappeared with it.
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