# Iran's Opera Houses Re-Opened



## Jorge Hereth (Aug 16, 2015)

That's a good news I think!

Here a video showing how it was at the reopening in 2013 and how Iran's opera people feel about it:





Seems opera has been very welcomed back to Iran; this video now shows the official footage made at _Café Opéra_ - the cafeteria at Tehran opera house Talar-e Vahdat (= Vahdat Hall) - of the song _Café_ Iranian singer Majid Reza homages the opera with:


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

I have high hopes for Iran... but possibly not for a good many years yet.

I'd love to visit one day, and a trip to the opera would be the icing on the cake.


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## Jorge Hereth (Aug 16, 2015)

Well, Iranian politics and death penalty policy always make us mistrust, but these parts are not everything about a country. Otherwise we would have to mistrust every other country of the world either.

What I have learned about Iranians: when they say or decide to do something, they mean it. And they would not reopen their Opera Houses for nothing: a theater needs to be prepared for the presentation of operas, reforms have to be done at its structure, and so on, and the expenses of an Opera Theater are not exactly low. If they took these expenses, because they really meant it I'd say.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Back during the Shah, Persia as a very cultured country and more Westernized than any Middle East country except for Israel. Alas, religion took over.If you talk to any people from Iran, unless they are Kurds they ALWAYS say they are Persian. I am surprised that culture went as far as opera, though.


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## Jorge Hereth (Aug 16, 2015)

Let's say Persia was pretty Westernized that way for upper class and upper middle class people, about that one I agree. But common citizens were not given access to anything, and that's what caused the religious "revolution". And to say oneself Persian, Kurd or Assyrian, that's just about one's ethnicity and not nationality. People often see a mixture in it. But it looks to me culture is more widespread nowadays, and knowledge more generalized. And yes, opera already was there in Persia:











And during the three decades between the closing and the reopening there was Iranian opera being presented outside Iran:


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## Guest (Aug 31, 2015)

This is fascinating - thank you for sharing. As the son of Persian immigrants with plenty of family still in Iran, this is naturally of huge interest to me

This article nearly brought a tear to my eye: http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ny-orchestra-an-ovation-before-playing-a-note

(I don't agree with everything above, but I don't want to hijack this into a political conversation!)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

(sorry, repetitive information)


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## Jorge Hereth (Aug 16, 2015)

eldiego said:


> This is fascinating - thank you for sharing. As the son of Persian immigrants with plenty of family still in Iran, this is naturally of huge interest to me
> 
> This article nearly brought a tear to my eye: http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ny-orchestra-an-ovation-before-playing-a-note
> 
> (I don't agree with everything above, but I don't want to hijack this into a political conversation!)


And I would not have myself hijacked into political conversation, Eldiego :lol:

And here some music by Tehran's reborn Symphony Orchestra in Action; I must say, they're doing fine


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2015)

Jorge Hereth said:


> And I would not have myself hijacked into political conversation, Eldiego :lol:
> 
> And here some music by Tehran's reborn Symphony Orchestra in Action; I must say, they're doing fine


Of course - I didn't mean to imply that anyway

Thank you so much for providing these clips! It is a dream of mine to one day see this orchestra in Iran

Vc esta en Mina Gerais? Foi na Brasil pra a copa, eu goste muito Belo! Small world as the principal clarinetist in my small city (Halifax, Canada) played in the Belo orchestra when they were first formed several years (a decade?) ago

Saudades do Brasil...e brasileiras!


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## Jorge Hereth (Aug 16, 2015)

Então cê fala algo de português, Eldiego 

And yes, I'm right here in Minas Gerais, living in a small tiny rural town called Guaranésia, some 450 km / 280 miles from Belo Horizonte, 560 km / 350 miles from Rio de Janeiro, 320 km / 200 miles from São Paulo, 570 km / 356 miles from Goiânia and 1.280 km / 800 miles from Salvador.

So you liked it here in Brazil despite the soccer World Cup? About myself, I avoided any big cities during the World Cup, too expensive and too crowded for my taste. Watched the matches together with friends at pubs in town.

By the way, Belo Horizonte has several symphonic orchestras; which one did your clarinetist play at?

And I dream about visiting Iran one day. What Iranian friends in France told me, seems the country of your ancestors is amazing. My mother spent a good time there, she really loved it. It was hardly possible to get her away from Isfahan, she loved it too much and half of her acquaintances she made there have already flown over to meet her again. About having to wear a chador in the streets, she just said she didn't feel being asked too much.

"As long as Iranian women don't wear their chadors in European or American streets, having to wear a tchador in Iranian streets is ok to me", she says. She was amazed how free from criminality Iran is, and how much you can trust an Iranian's word. According to her, there's something the rest of the world world should learn from Iranians.

At a joiner's store in Isfahan my mom saw a table she wanted to purchase. A pretty small one she could take in her luggage, a piece of traditional Persian handicraft. It was already sold, but the joiner told her he would make another one for her. He would need his payment in advance, and to my mother it was ok. She developed a profound friendship with that joiner and his wife. But after some weeks my mom found out her presence might also be useful at some other places in this world rather than Isfahan, and she got over her reluctance and decided to fly to Switzerland where one of my sisters - married to a Swiss - lives. Ok, there she boards a flight to Zurich, but her table was not ready yet. The joiner promised to mail it and refused to have the mail fee paid. He said it was his delay, not my mom's.

From Zurich she phones the joiner to know how he, his wife and her table are doing, the joiner says he needs some more days, which was a sympathetic lie of his. The days he'd need had another purpose. He and his wife took that table ready, put it in their delivery van and drove the whole way from Isfahan up to Zurich to deliver that table personally to my mom. She told me she got completely emotional when that couple phoned her from a Zurich phone cell to know where exactly they would find her...


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