ODESSA Opera House, known as Odessa National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, is the oldest theatre in Ukraine and one of the most beautiful opera houses in Europe.
For this reason it is a common backdrop for wedding photographs, especially as the City registry office is only a hundred yards or so away. There is a constant stream of newly married couples and their guests, particularly at weekends, vying for an unusual or unique shot for their wedding albums.
I saw a photographer setting up this interesting picture when I was in Odessa a few years ago, and took advantage of the opportunity to add another to my own pictorial memories of Ukraine’s Black Sea holiday city. (see picture above)
Odessa’s first opera house was opened in 1810 and destroyed by fire in 1873. The modern building was constructed by in Vienna Baroque style and opened in 1887, with architecture of the luxurious audience hall in late French rococo style.
Apparently, the unique acoustics of the horseshoe-designed auditorium allows performers to deliver even a whisper-low tone of voice from the stage to any part of the hall. Odessa Opera House sits next to the popular Mozart Hotel and just two minutes from the the city’s popular pedestrian street Deribasovskaya, which is great for eating, shopping and especially in the evenings, people watching!
The first time I had been in Odessa was just for a single day about 15 years ago. I arrived on the morning overnight sleeper from Kiev because I always had this yearning to visit the city which lent its name to the famous Frederick Forsyth novel and the film of the same name starring John Voight, The Odessa Files.
I had enjoyed a five-day city break in Kiev and decided to take in Odessa on the way back to Dublin. From the minute I got a taxi from the station to my accommodation in the Mozart Hotel, just opposite the Opera House, I just loved the place. Even though the weather was terrible it knew right away this would not be my last visit.
I had breakfast, and lunch, on my only day in the city in a well known Odessan cafe called Kompot, on the Main Street, Deribasovskaya, but despite my fleeting first trip and the awful weather I liked the city so much that I have been back several times…. and hopefully will be again although the Separatist war in the east still casts its shadow.
The 'Travel' Life of Brian 