Opera singers in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv hope to return to the stage more than 20 months into Russia's war by performing in the basement of their theatre to be safe from the threat of Russian air strikes.
Ukraine's second city, which banned mass public events when Russia invaded in February 2022, is regularly targeted by missiles that can take as little as 45 seconds to land from the moment they are fired across the Russian border 30 km away.
It plans to ask city officials to allow them to perform regularly, as the basement essentially serves as a bomb shelter. It held a dress rehearsal in front of theatre staff, friends and family on Friday."We sang at many places - garages, forests, schools, kindergartens, hospitals - but there's nothing like the stage. Opera is a fairy tale. All of us, the ballet troupe, the opera troupe, we are all incredibly happy.
"The building can withstand a lot, it's a monolithic and safe construction. The elite it was designed for needed to be safe." The distance to the border is so short that missiles can land in the city and explode before the air raid siren has even gone off, said Ihor Tuluzov, the theatre's general and artistic director.dozens of classrooms in its underground metro system to allow some pupils to return to in-person tuition. Schools have been teaching online during the war because of the air strikes.
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