A stately yellow-brick opera house designed by Alexei Shchusev — also the architect of Lenin's mausoleum — and one of the great Stalinist monuments of Tashkent. The interior has six grand foyers, each decorated by craftsmen from a different Uzbek region: Khiva, Bukhara, Fergana, Samarkand, Termez, and Tashkent.
Cheap tickets get you a remarkable evening — opera and ballet in Russian repertoire, regular performances of national favourites like Hamza, and audiences who dress for the occasion. Even if you don't catch a show, the building is worth circling at dusk when it lights up.