Opernhaus Kasan

The Kazan Opera House, officially the Musa Jalil Tatar Academic State Opera and Ballet Theatre, stands on Freedom Square. The company opened on 17 June 1939 with Nazib Zhiganov's opera Kachkyn but did not yet have a building of its own. Construction of the new house, begun in 1936, was delayed by the war and completed with the labour of German prisoners of war; the Kazan architect Ismagil Gainutdinov revised the design. The building was inaugurated on 28 September 1956 with Zhiganov's Altynchach. In the same year the theatre was named after the poet Musa Jalil, who had headed its literary department before the war. It has been an academic theatre since 1988. The house hosts the Chaliapin Opera Festival, founded in 1982, and the Rudolf Nureyev Festival of Classical Ballet, held since 1987.