State Opera Stara Zagora

Fire gutted the opera house in 1991, twenty years after it opened, and the company went on working without it — elsewhere in the town, and on tour — until the restored building was handed back in 2010 with a performance of Bizet's Carmen. The institution behind that endurance dates from 1925 and is the oldest opera company in continuous activity outside Sofia; it passed into state hands in 1946. Opera, ballet, symphonic concerts and work for young audiences share the season, and the house mounts its own Festival of Opera and Ballet Art.