The Tehran Opera Company was founded in 1967 by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Art. The company was active until 1978. It officially ended its activities after the Iranian revolution. This booklet is the company’s program for 1974-1975 season.
Tehran street musicians play and sing for passers-by outside Paytakht Building, located at Mirdamad Avenue, Tehran.
Paytakht Building is a shopping centre for computer hardware and software in an upper-middle class neighbourhood in Tehran.
Dave Brubeck’s concert In Abadan and Tehran, May 1958. David Warren “Dave” Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of progressive jazz. Brubeck’s most famous recording was the Jazz piece, Take Five.
Specially manufactured Playing Cards for the Iranian monopoly by Thos. De La Rue & CO Ltd. London. Designed by V. Romanowski de Boncza. Circa 1937.
These photographs show one of the earliest performances of a Western-style play in Iran. The play was Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice performed in Zoroastrians Club in Tehran , April 19, 1928. Majid Rezvani was the director. Arbab Aflatoon, a Zoroastrian, was the Merchant of Venice, and Kazem Bakhtiari acted as a female character. In those days the Iranian women still could not act in the plays yet.
* Photographer: Jahangir Mossavar Rahmani- From the personal collection of Yadollah Rezvani.
Iranian popular music changed most radically in the 1960s, when it shifted from the traditional to the western style that would dominate the 1970s. Faegheh Atashin, most famously known as Googoosh, is one of the major contributors to the western style of pop music. Originally pressed on the vinyl format in 1960s and 1970s, her songs and performances were banned after the Iranian revolution of 1979 but her music preserved via the cassettes in the 1980s and CDs in the 1990s in diaspora. Here are her vinyl record covers mainly from 1970s.
The Iranian covers design for popular music tapes. Late 1970s.
Siroos Ghahremani, an Iranian showman from the 1950s and 1960s entertains people in his private zoo in the city of Shiraz. The photos are most probably from the mid-1960s.
