{"id":63114,"date":"2026-10-17T12:42:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/?p=63114"},"modified":"2026-10-17T12:42:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:42:42","slug":"yerevans-opera-house-honours-the-father-of-armenian-symphonic-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/yerevans-opera-house-honours-the-father-of-armenian-symphonic-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Yerevan&#8217;s Opera House Honours the Father of Armenian Symphonic Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-lfile-container=\"516f3d6c-21b5-4213-a080-a854e667f2ad\" data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">On Sunday, November 1, at 18:00, the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet will celebrate the 155th birthday of the composer whose name it carries.<\/p>\n<p>The anniversary evening lands on Spendiaryan&#8217;s actual birthday, at the opera house whose garden holds his grave. It&#8217;s a chance to hear the music that gave Armenia its own symphonic voice, in the hall most closely tied to him.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"who-was-alexander-spendiaryan\">Who was Alexander Spendiaryan<\/h2>\n<p>Alexander Spendiaryan (1871\u20131928) is widely called the founder of Armenian symphonic music. Born on November 1, 1871, in Kakhovka in today&#8217;s Ukraine, he grew up far from Armenia and studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n<p>His big idea was to fuse Armenian folk melody with the full colour of the European orchestra \u2014 something no one had done at that scale before. In 1924 he moved to Yerevan, then a small city just starting to build its cultural institutions, and spent his last years teaching, collecting folk songs and writing. He died in Yerevan in 1928.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-music\">The music<\/h2>\n<p>Three works are the best way in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Almast<\/strong> \u2014 his only opera, a story of love, ambition and betrayal set in 18th-century Armenia. Spendiaryan didn&#8217;t live to finish it; it was completed after his death and premiered in Moscow in 1930. It became one of the cornerstones of Armenian opera.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Yerevan Etudes<\/strong> \u2014 orchestral pieces built on folk tunes, written as a portrait of the young city he had made his home.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crimean Sketches<\/strong> \u2014 colourful early suites inspired by the years he spent in Crimea, and still among his most performed works.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you only know Khachaturian, Spendiaryan is the generation before: the composer who first proved Armenian music could fill a symphony hall.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"spendiaryans-yerevan-today\">Spendiaryan&#8217;s Yerevan today<\/h2>\n<p>You walk past his legacy every time you cross Freedom Square. The Opera House, designed by Alexander Tamanyan, bears his name, and Spendiaryan rests in the garden beside it.<\/p>\n<p>A short walk away on Nalbandyan Street, the Spendiaryan House-Museum keeps his manuscripts, piano and family archive. And the anniversary isn&#8217;t only a Yerevan affair: this autumn the Armenian Embassy in Moscow held a 155th-anniversary evening with a documentary exhibition about his life.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Sunday, November 1, at 18:00, the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet will celebrate the 155th birthday of the composer whose name it carries. The anniversary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":63115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63117,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63114\/revisions\/63117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatabout.live\/ka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}