Classical Musicians Make Military Supplies In Yerevan's Opera House

Inside Yerevan’s Opera Theater, a crowd of mostly women are at work producing a vital piece of equipment for Armenia’s military.

Scraps of waste fabric donated from various factories throughout Armenia are snipped into pieces…

then threaded into fishing nets…

to make sheets of camouflage netting. This completed net is being rolled up before delivery to Armenia’s frontline troops.

Yeva Gevorgian, who is a double bass player in the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra, is one of several elite musicians now volunteering in the same building in which they usually hold concerts. Gevorgian told RFE/RL that the camouflage netting was urgently needed at the front. “It’s not cheap, and [Armenia] doesn’t have so much money,” she says.

Two women thread scrap fabric into an almost-complete camouflage net in the cloakroom of the Yerevan Opera Theater.
 
Gevorgian says she and her professional musician colleagues “all have friends at the front line whom we are waiting for. It’s terrible.” She says young women like her “can’t just stay at home and do nothing.”

Women at work on the stage of the Opera Theater on October 29
 
David Aghajanian, who organized the use of the theater, told RFE/RL that there are more than 700 people working on 25 such operations in public buildings throughout Yerevan. Work inside the opera theater began five days ago.

Women sort fabric scraps on the theater’s main stage.
 
As well as camouflage netting used to hide military positions and armored vehicles, Aghajanian says volunteers are also making clothes and other items needed on the front line.

Professional musicians work on netting in the cloakroom of the Opera Theater.
 
The de facto Defense Ministry of Nagorno-Karabakh said on October 29 that 51 more casualties had taken its military death toll to 1,119 since fighting with Azerbaijani forces erupted on September 27.