Reclusive Turkmenistan staged its first foreign opera on Tuesday, nearly 19 years after the Central Asian country's founding president banned the art form as "incompatible with Turkmen mentality". A state theatre in the capital Ashgabat was packed for the staging of 19th century Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci" ("Clowns") as part of an international drama festival.

Older spectators leaving the theatre late on a cool Tuesday night voiced a nostalgia for the long-taboo art form while younger spectators enthused over the performance.

Mekan Byashimov, a 54-year-old schoolteacher said he hoped that operas would be staged regularly and that ballet would also make a reappearance on the national stage. "We used to have good premieres. I went regularly. If we want to call ourselves a cultured nation, we need to restore opera and ballet," Byashimov told AFP. Aina Shiryayeva, a 20-year-old student watching opera for the first time said she had enjoyed the performance despite not understanding any of the words. "The music and the artists! Everything was so wonderful. I am delighted. I have seen the opera!" she said. Gas-rich Turkmenistan's eccentric first leader Sapurmurat Niyazov banned opera as well as foreign ballet in 2001 in what he posited was a move to protect Turkmen culture. The ban on art forms closely associated with Soviet and Russian imperial rule continued under second president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who came to power after Niyazov's death in 2006.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019