# A question about the popularity of Opera in Mongolia.



## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Did you know that Mongolia has an opera? Neither did I.

I found this clip while searching for triumphal march from Aida.





Judging by the quality of music and staging, I'd say that opera is probably quite popular there. For them to be able to mount such an amazing production, in a country with just 4 million people its pretty amazing. But however, judging from the applause, it seems to be in a rather small theater with limited seating capacity, and possibly only half full.

How are they able to afford to mount full scale productions? Are there a lot of extremely rich patrons in that country? Is the overall population of UlanBaatar relatively wealthy? What is their economy based on? Was it a touring production? The ballet does seem staged very similarily to that of the mets '89 production which you can watch here:


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Fascinating!

Mongolia was a Soviet satellite for much of the 20th century, so it probably originated with the Russian influence. Similarly, for a long time and maybe still, many US ballet companies were peppered with defectors from Cuba's stellar ballet program.


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## tyroneslothrop (Sep 5, 2012)

obwan said:


> Did you know that Mongolia has an opera? Neither did I.


Even more shocking--neither did Operabase!


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