# Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre > The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre, branded Ural Opera Ballet, is the city’s main stage for opera and ballet, in a 1912 building on Lenin Avenue. Entry is with a show ticket — allow 2.5–3 hours. Prices run from about 300 ₽ to 20,000 ₽ for the New Year Nutcracker. Evening shows start at 18:30 on weekdays, 18:00 at weekends. Web page: https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yekaterinburg-opera-theatre - City: [Yekaterinburg](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg), Russia - YesGo score: 34/100 (Yes, if nearby) - Time on site: 2 h 30 min - Opening hours: Performances most days: matinees at 11:00, evenings at 18:30 on weekdays and 18:00 at weekends; doors open an hour before. Box office daily 10:00–20:00 - With kids: Fine with kids - Address: Lenin Avenue 46a (prospekt Lenina, 46a) - Curtain times: Matinees 11:00; evenings 18:30 Mon–Fri, 18:00 Sat–Sun - Doors open: One hour before the show - Box office: Entrance No. 10, right of the main doors; daily 10:00–20:00, the contacts page adds a 14:00–15:00 break - Ticket prices: Depend on show, date and seat: roughly 300 ₽ up to 20,000 ₽ for the December Nutcracker - Paying online: Visa, Mastercard and Mir cards issued by Russian banks only - Online sales close: 2 hours before curtain; unpaid orders cancel after 20 minutes - Children: Every child needs a ticket; evening shows are 6+; under-14s only with an adult - Refunds: 100% 10+ days ahead, 50% at 9–5 days, 30% at 4–3 days, none after - Nearest metro: Ploshchad 1905 Goda, about 1 km, a 12–15-minute walk - Coordinates: 56.83886, 60.61670 - Facts checked: 30.10.2026 ## Key facts - **1912** — the building opened, with Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar (source: Russian Wikipedia, Екатеринбургский театр оперы и балета; Tonkosti travel guide) - **1 of 4** — federal musical theatres in Russia, as the theatre describes its status (source: Official theatre website, About, Russian and English versions) - **Vladimir Semyonov** — the St Petersburg engineer who designed it and later became Moscow’s chief architect (source: Russian Wikipedia; Tripster journal, Main theatres of Yekaterinburg) - **3 Muses** — the sculpture group crowning the centre of the facade (source: Russian Wikipedia; Tonkosti travel guide) - **1,200 seats** — the horseshoe auditorium’s capacity as built (source: Russian Wikipedia; building history notes in search results) - **1914** — the first ballet performance, two years after the opera house opened (source: Official theatre website, About; Tonkosti travel guide) - **2018** — the company rebranded as Ural Opera Ballet (source: Official theatre website, About; Tonkosti travel guide) - **Neo-Baroque** — eclectic style with Viennese Baroque touches (source: Russian Wikipedia; Tonkosti travel guide) - **The Passenger** — Weinberg’s opera got its first Russian staging here in 2016; Glass’s Satyagraha in 2014 (source: Official theatre website, About; Russian Wikipedia) > **Foreign cards won’t work for tickets** Visa and Mastercard cards issued abroad have not worked in Russia since March 2022, and the theatre’s website only accepts cards from Russian banks. Plan to pay in roubles at the box office — cash or a Russian card — or ask your hotel or a local friend to book online for you. The Nutcracker and December shows sell out by autumn. ## Is the Yekaterinburg opera house worth it? Yes, if you have an evening free. Ural Opera Ballet is one of the strongest companies outside Moscow and St Petersburg, its ballet troupe in particular. Since 2011 it has mixed the classics with work by Hans van Manen, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León — the first Russian company to dance them — and revivals of Petipa’s Paquita. The building is a pleasure too: a white neo-Baroque house from 1912 with a horseshoe auditorium, boxes and gilded tiers, sometimes nicknamed the White Swan. Tickets cost a fraction of what you pay at the Bolshoi or the Mariinsky, and even the cheap seats get you inside the hall. When it’s not worth it: if your only free slot is daytime on a weekday. There’s no visitor entry without a show and no published building tours, so in daylight you just see the facade — nice for a photo, five minutes at most. ## How to buy tickets as a foreign visitor The safest places are the **theatre’s own website** and its **box office**. The theatre also lists Kassir.ru and Yandex Afisha as official sellers. Ignore lookalike sites and touts at the door: around New Year, resold Nutcracker seats go for several times face value, and each barcode scans only once. Online, there’s no reservation: you pay within 20 minutes or the seats return to sale. The e-ticket arrives as a PDF by email and is scanned from your phone. The site works in Russian, and online sales close two hours before curtain. In person, the box office is at entrance No. 10, to the right of the main doors on the Krasnoarmeyskaya Street side, open daily 10:00–20:00 (the contacts page mentions a break from 14:00 to 15:00). Bring your passport if you might need a refund. Concessions for pensioners and some other groups are for Russian document holders only. ## Ticket prices and the best seats Prices depend on the show, the day and the row. A daytime children’s opera starts at about 300 ₽, a weekday opera evening is far cheaper than a weekend ballet premiere, and for the December Nutcracker local news site E1.ru reports 5,000–20,000 ₽. The seat map on each show page shows the exact price when you hover over a seat. The hall has a stalls level (parterre), a dress circle (beletazh), an upper tier (yarus) and a gallery, with boxes at the sides. For ballet, the centre of the dress circle or the middle of the stalls from row 7 shows the whole corps de ballet. For opera, the central stalls sound best. The gallery is the budget way in — fine for a first visit, but the stage is small from up there, so bring binoculars. The theatre warns that some side seats have a restricted view; check the seat map before you pay. ## What’s on: operas, ballets and seasonal favourites - **Classical ballet** — Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Le Corsaire, Paquita and The Nutcracker, the last mostly in late December. - **New ballet** — pieces by the company’s choreographers and European modern repertoire you won’t easily find elsewhere in Russia. - **Opera classics** — Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Rigoletto, Carmen and Lucia di Lammermoor. - **Rare operas** — Weinberg’s The Passenger, about an Auschwitz guard, and Glass’s Satyagraha were first staged in Russia here. - **Family shows** — The Snow Queen, Thumbelina and the opera Morozko, usually as 11:00 matinees. - **The Christmas Concert** — a December gala of arias and ballet numbers, popular with locals. ## History of the building The theatre was built on the site of a wooden circus to a competition design by **Vladimir Semyonov**, a St Petersburg engineer who later became Moscow’s chief architect. It opened in 1912 with Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, in a horseshoe hall for about 1,200 people. Look up at the facade: a wide balcony on brackets, arched windows, ornate lamps and, above the centre, a **group of three Muses** with the date 1912. The style is eclectic neo-Baroque with a nod to Vienna. The ballet company gave its first performance in 1914. According to the theatre, stars such as the tenors Sergei Lemeshev and Ivan Kozlovsky began their careers here. Its modern revival came in the 2010s with national Golden Mask awards, and in 2018 it rebranded as Ural Opera Ballet. ## How to get to the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre 1. From the [Plotinka dam](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yekaterinburg-plotinka): about 900 m, a 12-minute walk east along Lenin Avenue (prospekt Lenina), past the [Sevastyanov House](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/sevastyanov-house) and the main post office, to the white building with the Muses on the even-numbered side. 2. By metro: ride to **Ploshchad 1905 Goda**, then walk about 1 km east along Lenin Avenue, 12–15 minutes. 3. By tram: get off at **Opera Theatre (Operny Teatr)**. The theatre lists routes A, 2, 6, 13, 15, 18, 26 and 27. 4. By bus: the same stop, Operny Teatr, served by routes 49, 50, 54, 56, 60, 64, 84, 89 and others. Numbers change now and then — check Yandex Maps, which works best in Russia. 5. The main entrance faces Lenin Avenue; the box office is entrance No. 10 on the Krasnoarmeyskaya Street side. Wheelchair users enter through entrance No. 4, left of the main doors, with a call button for an assistant. 6. By taxi: ask for prospekt Lenina, 46a. After the show, walk a block away from the doors to find a car faster. ## Dress code and house rules There’s no formal dress code. Locals dress neatly, and a bit smarter for premieres and the New Year shows; jeans with a clean shirt are fine, sportswear and flip-flops look out of place. Coats go to the cloakroom in the basement, which gets busy after the show. Food, drinks and bouquets can’t go into the hall — flowers for the dancers are handed to an usher. Filming and photographing the performance is not allowed. After the third bell nobody is let into the stalls; latecomers wait for a pause and move to their seats at the interval. Arrive half an hour early to see the hall before the lights go down. ## Before you go: checklist - [ ] Ticket bought from the theatre, its box office or an official seller - [ ] Roubles in cash or a Russian card — foreign cards don’t work - [ ] E-ticket saved on your phone or printed - [ ] Age limit checked: evening shows are 6+ - [ ] Arriving 30 minutes early; doors open an hour before - [ ] Neat clothes; no food, drinks or bouquets into the hall ## Opera house, Yeltsin Center or Vysotsky: how to spend an evening | | Opera and Ballet Theatre | Yeltsin Center | Vysotsky skyscraper | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | What it is | Opera and ballet in a 1912 hall | Museum of Russia in the 1990s | Observation deck on the 52nd floor | | When | Evenings by schedule, weekend matinees | Daytime | Day and evening | | Entry | Show ticket | Paid | Paid | | Time needed | 2.5–3 hours | 2–3 hours | 45 minutes | With one evening in Yekaterinburg, YesGo would spend it at a ballet here — it’s the best night out the city has. See the [Yeltsin Center](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yeltsin-center) by day, and catch the view from the Vysotsky before the show rather than after, when the deck may already be closing. ## Yekaterinburg after dark Places in Yekaterinburg worth an evening, rated by YesGo. - [Plotinka Dam](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yekaterinburg-plotinka) — YesGo score 44/100 (Yes, if nearby) · 45 min · Free - [Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yekaterinburg-opera-theatre) — YesGo score 34/100 (Yes, if nearby) · 2 h 30 min · 300–20,000 ₽, depends on the show ## Central Yekaterinburg ending with a show Start at the Plotinka, walk Lenin Avenue past the Sevastyanov House, ride up the Vysotsky before sunset and finish at the opera. Add it to your route — YesGo sorts the timing and walks. 1. [Plotinka Dam](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yekaterinburg-plotinka) — YesGo score 44/100 (Yes, if nearby) · 45 min · Free 2. [Sevastyanov House](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/sevastyanov-house) — YesGo score 39/100 (Yes, if nearby) · 45 min · Free, outside only 3. [Vysotsky Skyscraper](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/vysotsky-skyscraper) — YesGo score 41/100 (Yes, if nearby) · 45 min · 600 ₽, children 5–12 400 ₽ 4. [Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre](https://yesgo.io/russia/yekaterinburg/yekaterinburg-opera-theatre) — YesGo score 34/100 (Yes, if nearby) · 2 h 30 min · 300–20,000 ₽, depends on the show ## Not to be confused with Across Lenin Avenue, at number 47, is the Sverdlovsk Musical Comedy Theatre — a separate company staging operetta and musicals, with its own box office. When buying through a ticket aggregator, also check the city: Novosibirsk and Perm have opera and ballet theatres with very similar names. ## Tips - Book the December Nutcracker in September or October — by December only the priciest seats are left. - A weekday opera from the gallery is the cheapest way to see the hall. - No Russian card? Buy at the box office in person on your first day in town, with cash in roubles. - Take a matinee at 11:00 if you’re travelling with children under six, and sit near an aisle. - Buy at least 10 days ahead if plans might change — that’s the only window for a full refund. - Photograph the facade after dark from across Lenin Avenue, when the Muses are lit. - After an evening show, the lit-up Plotinka is a 12-minute walk west. ## Questions ### How much are tickets for the Yekaterinburg opera? It depends on the show and seat: from about 300 ₽ for a daytime children’s opera to 5,000–20,000 ₽ for the December Nutcracker. The seat map on the theatre’s website shows exact prices. ### Can foreigners buy tickets online? The website only accepts cards issued by Russian banks, because foreign Visa and Mastercard cards don’t work in Russia. Pay at the box office in roubles or ask someone with a Russian card to book. ### Where is the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre? At Lenin Avenue 46a in the city centre, about 12 minutes’ walk east of the Plotinka dam. The tram and bus stop is Operny Teatr; the nearest metro is Ploshchad 1905 Goda. ### What time do shows start? Matinees start at 11:00, evening shows at 18:30 on weekdays and 18:00 at weekends. Doors open an hour before. ### Is there a dress code? No formal one. Smart casual is the norm, a bit dressier for premieres and New Year shows. Avoid sportswear and beach shoes. ### Can you visit the theatre without seeing a show? Not really. The theatre publishes no visitor tours, so the hall and foyers are only open to ticket holders. The facade is free to see from the street any time. ### Are performances in English? Operas are sung in their original language, often Russian or Italian, and ballet needs no words. Ask the box office whether a show has surtitles; don’t count on English ones. ### Can children attend? Yes. Every child needs their own ticket. Evening shows are rated 6+, so younger children should go to matinees, and under-14s must be with an adult. ### How long is a performance? Most run 2–3 hours with one or two intervals. Allow about 3 hours with the cloakroom. ## How we checked The address, curtain times, door opening, box office, online sales, payment, refund and children’s rules, accessible entrance and public transport come from the theatre’s official website. The site gives the box office hours two ways — with a 14:00–15:00 break on the contacts page and without one on the tickets page — so we show both. Prices only appear in each show’s seat map, so the range comes from E1.ru (September 2026: Nutcracker 5,000–20,000 ₽, Morozko from 300 ₽) and the Tonkosti guide (October 2026: 300 ₽ to 12,000 ₽) and is marked as being checked. We found no published building tours: the theatre has an excursions department but no public programme online. Today’s seat count isn’t published; 1,200 is the capacity as built. Sources date the 1912 opening by both the old and the new calendar, so we give only the year. Surtitles in English aren’t confirmed by any source, so we don’t promise them. There is no English Wikipedia article on the theatre. Walking times and distances are our estimate from the map. Every other fact is backed by at least two independent sources. ## Sources - Official website of Ural Opera Ballet: Contacts, Tickets, Visitors, FAQ and About pages, 30.10.2026 - Russian Wikipedia: Екатеринбургский театр оперы и балета; Wikidata Q4174311 - Tonkosti travel guide: Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre, October 2026 - Tripster journal: Main theatres of Yekaterinburg - E1.ru report on New Year show tickets, September 2026 - Visa and Mastercard statements on suspending operations in Russia, March 2022 --- This is the Markdown version of a YesGo page for AI assistants. Quote the web page link above, not this file.