This paper focuses on the opera and theatre-activities in Istanbul in comparison with Cairo in the 1860s-1890s. Using the institution of musical theatre as public space the paper discovers how modernity, colonial administration, cosmopolitanism and popular reception of Western music were intertwined in the two capitals in similar and at the same time very different ways based on archival research. This endeavour also aims to critically test the concept of histoire croisée (Werner-Zimmerman) in this period in the Middle East. Thus Istanbul is approached here as a part of a network in the Eastern Mediterranean where not only political but cultural competition connected the participants. Istanbul’s flourishing theatre culture reached its peak with Güllü Agop’s Ottoman Theatre (1867-1884, Matin And) and although there was no special opera house, operas were given since the 18th century in different public theatres, one early example being the Naum theatre in the 1840s which was also supported by Abdülmecid (Turan-Komsouglu). With the transformation of the army, Donizetti Pasha and other European composers served Sultans Mahmud II and Abdülmecid (Arac?). During Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909), censure had its effect on opera and theatre activities but nevertheless Istanbul was often visited by foreign troupes and had its own music activities. In Egypt, after the British occupation (1882) the Cairo Opera House (1869) became a public space which was not only confined to European visiting groups but increasingly were used by the local communities. There were Maronite and Jewish balls but also – after the 1870s short experimental period (Sadgrove) – new efforts to present pieces in Arabic for an Arab audience thus this period is the real birth of Arab theatre (Najm). These offers by Al-Qabbani (1884-5) and later by Sulayman Haddad (1894) were controlled and sometimes refused by the authorities. However, occasionally, “Turkish” groups were visiting from Istanbul as well like that of the Armenian Eléazar Mélikian in 1888. In and between these two cities, networks of impresario, political and cultural newspapers, Ottoman propaganda and resistance met in a mixture which one may call the transformation of public space. The theatres and the Opera House offered also a good market for European and non-European artists thus created a locality where money, entertainment and politics met. In the Ottoman and Arab publics we find common strategies of resistance but also common reception of European-style entertainment as civilisation and “culture”.