By 1984 the USSR had 84 musical theatres, including 50 opera and ballet theatres and 34 theatres of musical comedy and operetta

By 1984 the USSR had 84 musical theatres, including 50 opera and ballet theatres and 34 theatres of musical comedy and operetta. There were theatres in every capital of the union republics, as well as in the large cultural and industrial centres: Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Perm, Irkutsk, Rostov-on-Don and other cities. Of the 37 opera houses now operating in Russia, the majority, 25, were opened in the Soviet period. Only 6 were founded before 1917, and 11 after 1991. Thus the USSR turned opera from an aristocratic habit into a mass institution.

In the photograph: the Buryat State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Ulan-Ude.