The State Opera and Ballet () is the national directorate of opera and ballet companies of Turkey, with venues in Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Mersin, Antalya and Samsun. The directorate is bound to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. As of January 2018, Murat Karahan is the General Director. History Early history The first opera staged during the Ottoman period is usually attributed to the reign of Selim III (1761–1808), when Selim, himself a composer and a poet, invited a foreign company to stage an opera at the Topkapı Palace in 1797. In 1840, Gaetano Donizetti's Belisario became the first opera to be translated into Turkish, and was performed at the newly built theatre by Italian architect Bosco. The theater was transferred to Tütüncüoğlu Michael Naum Efendi in 1844, who continued to arrange opera performances for the following 26 years. An important public opera performance was Giuseppe Verdi's Ernani, staged by an Italian company in Beyoğlu in 1846. Also in 1846, Naum Efendi's theatre was destroyed by fire and was replaced by a new one. During the period of 1846–1877, operas of Verdi, performed mostly by Italian companies, reached a wide audience. One of the earliest Turkish operettas was Leblebici Horhor (Horhor the chickpea seller), by the Armenian composer Dikran Çuhacıyan who is also remembered as the composer of what may have been the first original opera in Turkish, Arif'in Hilesi (Arif's Deception) 1874. As with other arts, the development of Turkish opera and ballet was brought to a halt from the 1880s by almost constant warfare, peaking in the Balkan Wars and World War I which resulted in the collapse of the empire. Republican period The foundation of the new Republic of Turkey in 1923 was followed by Atatürk's Reforms, of which far-reaching cultural reforms were an important step. Under Atatürk's personal guidance, many talented young people were sent to Europe for professional training, who, upon their return during the 1930s, became teachers of music and performing arts at the newly established Musiki Muallim Mektebi in Ankara (opened in 1924) and Darülelhan in İstanbul. The first Turkish opera, Özsoy, composed by Ahmet Adnan Saygun to a libretto by Münir Hayri Egeli, premiered in 1934. It was shortly followed by Adnan Saygun's Taşbebek and Necil Kazım Akses’s Bay Önder. During 1935, German composer Paul Hindemith and theatre director Carl Ebert were invited to give lectures at Musiki Muallim Mektebi in Ankara,