Yekaterinburg Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre is on Lenin Avenue not far from the historic center of the city. This theatre is one of the most important ones in Russia and one of few with academic status (since 1966).
The Opera theatre was built on the site of the ramshackle circus on Drovyanaya Square, now Commune of Paris Square, in 1912. The Opera theatre is opposite the Ural University. It was spent over 300 thousand roubles on its construction. And it was then an enormous amount of money, more than a third of the city budget. However, a theatre was important for improving the status of the city. For a long time it was called New Theatre, and they began to call it Opera and Ballet Theatre only in 1931.
The project of a Pyatigorsk architect Vladimir Semenov won in the competition for theatre projects. The building of the theatre was designed for 1200 seats. The facade of the theatre is decorated by bas-reliefs and massive balconies with balustrades and molding. A sculpture group of three muses is on the front side of the building. For a century there were staged over a hundred operas and ballets at the theatre.
