The Opera House on Nizami Street is a peach-coloured neoclassical building dating from 1911, originally built privately by the oil magnate Daniil Mailov for a Russian-language theatre season. It has been the home of the state opera and ballet since the 1920s, and the company has a long tradition: composers like Uzeyir Hajibeyov made their reputation here.
Tickets are inexpensive and the productions can be remarkable. The mugham operas — combining Azerbaijani classical music with Western operatic form — are the most distinctive thing on offer and not easily seen anywhere else.