Abay State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre

The Abay Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of Central Asia's finest performing arts venues, housed in a Soviet-era building on a major boulevard in central Almaty. The repertoire is broad: Russian and European classics (Swan Lake, Carmen, La Bohème) share the programme with Kazakh operas and ballets that tell stories from the national epics. The orchestra and company are of a high standard.

Performances typically begin at 7pm, with matinees on Sundays. The ticket office is open from 10am to 6pm; tickets are very reasonably priced by international standards. Dress code is smart casual at minimum. The building itself — chandeliered and grandiose in the Soviet academic style — is worth seeing even if you don't attend a performance. The theatre is located on Qabanbay Batyr Street, a short walk from Republic Square.

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A story
The theatre is named for Abai Qunanbaiuly — usually just Abai — the 19th-century Kazakh poet, composer, and philosopher whose work is the foundation of modern Kazakh literature. Abai translated Pushkin and Lermontov into Kazakh while also writing his own verse meditations on the steppe, Islam, and modernity. He is so deeply embedded in Kazakh identity that his portrait appears on the 5,000 tenge note, and the country's largest square is named for him. The theatre that bears his name premiered the first Kazakh opera in 1934.

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