Not many people know that this lovely building, which today hosts national musical concerts and performances, was built to house Baku’s first synagogue, the Great Choral Synagogue. That was built in 1910 on donations from philanthropists and wealthy Jewish communities in Azerbaijan on land provided free of charge on the present-day Rashid Behbudov Street by the Baku City Council in 1901. The stately building was designed to resemble the Second Temple, with an Ionic order portico at the front and two stone tablets and a Star of David at the top of the columns.
Alongside functioning as a synagogue, in 1932 the building also began to house the Jewish Workers’ Theatre, which put on performances in Yiddish. But, as a result of Soviet anti-religious propaganda, in 1934 the building stopped functioning as a synagogue altogether and continued exclusively as a theatre until 1940. Later, it became a warehouse storing construction materials and then the administrative building of the Azerbaijan Hydrotechnics and Melioration Scientific Research Institute until 1979. Then it stood abandoned for about 10 years. In the late 1980s, at the initiative of popular Azerbaijani singer Rashid Behbudov, the building was allocated to the State Song Theatre, established in 1965. The building was restored and a 400-seat auditorium was added. In 2010 the building underwent further restoration. Nowadays the Azerbaijan State Song Theatre of Song named after Rashid Behbudov is not as popular as before but the building’s grandeur and interior still attract enthusiastic gazes.