Fidelio of overwhelming the (rather light) initial scenes of the opera. Beethoven accordingly experimented with cutting it back somewhat, for a planned 1808 performance in Prague; this is believed to be the version now called "Leonore No. 1". Finally, for the 1814 revival Beethoven began anew, and with fresh musical material wrote what we now know as the "Fidelio" overture. As this somewhat lighter overture seems to work best of the four as a start to the opera, Beethoven's final intentions are generally respected in contemporary productions. While some believe that Gustav Mahler introduced the practice of performing "Leonore No. 3"
Opera in Azerbaijan a yearly basis (except 1901 and 1913), featuring prominent singers of the time such as Natalia Ermolenko-Yuzhina and Antonina Nezhdanova. The Opera Theater in Baku was built in 1911. The first opera by an Azerbaijani composer premiered three years earlier, in 1908. "Leyli and Majnun" (1908) by Uzeyir Hajibeyov was the first creation in the opera genre not only in Azerbaijan, but also in the whole Muslim world. It was followed by the operas "Sheikh Sanan" (1909), "Rustam and Zohrab" (1910), "Shah Abbas and Khurshid Banu" (1912), "Asli and Karam" (1912) and "Harun and Leyla" (1915) which were written, but