A magical evening with the Alisher Navoyi Opera - Tashkent

The Navoi Theatre or to give its full title, "Alisher Navoi State Academic Bolshoi Theatre", the national opera theatre in Tashkent, is world famous and we were very keen to attend a concert there. Unfortunately the actual season began on 10^th September, the day after we left !! However nothing ventured, nothing gained so I asked my travel agent to get seats for any of their rehearsals. 

                                                                                                                              Farrukh of Advantours is an amazing guy. He had given us excellent guides for city tours of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara.  I told him we needed tickets for the rehearsals and he did the extraordinary - he got us tickets for the restricted Inaugural show of the First season of the Outside Concerts of the Alisher Novoyi Opera. It was a magical evening.

In 1929, amateurs of a concert-ethnographic group led by M. Kari-Yakubov was established and later founded the professional theatre, as per Wikipedia. In 1939 it was renamed the Uzbek State Opera and Ballet Theatre, and in March 1948 it was united with Russian theatre and called as the State Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Alisher Navoi. Later, in 1959 the theatre obtained the status of Academic theatre and in 1966 it achieved the status of Bolshoi Theatre.

The Opera and Ballet Grand Academic Theatre in Tashkent named after Alisher Navoi is one of the leading centres of performing arts in Central Asia, where many famous conductors and musicians, artistes and singers have performed. In fact this is one of the only three theatres (out of more than 700) that were given the status of Grand in the erstwhile Soviet Union. The other two theatres are in Moscow and Minsk. 

The artists of Navoi Theatre in Tashkent have graced the stages of La Scala, Milan, The Paris Opera, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan and the Bolshoi and Mariynsky theatres. Its wide repertoire ranges from classical favourites such as Swan Lake and Don-Quixote, to original creations, such as Dilorom or Tanovar, inspired by ancient Uzbek folk tales. Their performances can be compared to the best in the world.

The theatre’s building is an architectural monument of the mid 20-th century, its courtyard depicts the wonderful world of the national folk art. The author of designing the building was Academician Alexei Shusev, he also built Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow. Construction of the theatre began in 1939. 

In 1942, it had been suspended in connection with the difficulties of wartime, but in 1944 the construction continued. In November 1945 the Japanese prisoners of war from Kvantun Army were transferred to Tashkent. They finished the construction of the building. It was opened to the public in November, 1947, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Alisher Navoi. The theatre has a capacity of 1,400 spectators. It has its main stage of 540 square meters.

                                                                           

 On the day of our visit, the Govt had organised a Plov (pilaf) making event to win the Guinness Award for the largest Plov ever made. We had been invited but did not go as we did not want vast crowds. This event was at the Independence square - by evening the crowds were still there and despite heavy security, we were gently pushed through with our tickets into the Opera House barriers. The Manager took us to the seats and was about to eject some locals from the front row but I felt embarrassed so we settled for 4^th row, centre of the seating.                             

Turned out that this concert was a closed door event only for family and friends of the Orchestra members. what really made me happy was that whilst there were 80% elderly ladies, there were many young children from age 5 years up and they sat for the nonstop 2 ½ hour programme without making any noise!! Outstanding behaviour. None spoke, none fidgeted, no fancy gadgets’ either. I wish Indian kids were so well behaved.

The concert area was on the side. One could see that the arrangements for the decor were still incomplete and surprisingly, the workers carried on fixing the decorative pelmets on the side of the vast screens showing the concert – for benefit of the people at the back, without disturbing the audience in any way. 

Bobomurad Khudaikulov was the conductor for the evening, the State Orchestra sat on a stage and in front of them was another platform where, as we found out, various scenes from ballet were performed. There was no printed programme and nobody seemed to have a clue about what was the programme or how long it would be. We found this very common in Uzbekistan – many things dealing with Govt or state issues are not known or revealed. Nobody discusses politics, nobody questions a directive. Vague responses are given if you ask direct questions. I suppose this is hangover from the Soviet era and a follow through of the regimes which followed.

The evening’s programme was varied. Strauss, Velasquez, Faust, on the Don, an Uzbek opera “Delorum”, Bessa me mucho, Borodin, flamenco, many choral works – they seem to have a penchant for singing , Porgy and Bess by Gershwin, the music made famous by Johnny Depp in The Pirates series and so on. 

It was quite late by the time we finished and found that most of the restaurants had closed their kitchens for the night... it seems last orders are around 9.30 – 10.00 pm and we eventually landed up at the hotel having a sandwich in our rooms. But we left Tashkent next day, satiated after a wonderful evening.

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