The President of Turkmenistan has performed a dramatic about-turn and lifted a ban on opera and circuses that was imposed by his eccentric predecessor.

Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ended the seven-year ban in his latest move to dismantle a personality cult surrounding the late dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, who styled himself Turkmenbashi or “Father of the Turkmen”.

Mr Niyazov ordered the opera house to close in 2001, declaring “who needs Tosca or La Traviata any more”? He shut the state ballet and circus companies because he said that scantily clad women offended Turkmen morality.

Mr Berdymukhamedov promised to restore performances and to revive cinema-going in the former Soviet republic. He told a meeting of Turkmen artists and intellectuals in the capital, Ashgabat: “I propose to breathe life back into the lyrical arts in this country. It is regrettable to see there are no good cinemas in Ashgabat. Cinemas are currently used for other purposes and will need a complete renovation before they can revert to their original function.

“It is also time to rebuild and reopen the building that housed the Turkmenistan state circus, bringing back circus spectacles including popular national equestrian shows.”

Mr Berdymukhamedov, 50, made no mention of ballet but said that Turkmenistan would stage its first opera production this summer. It is not clear where performers will come from, however, as the company was broken up after Turkmenbashi outlawed Verdi and Wagner.

Mr Berdymukhamedov told his audience, in remarks broadcast on national television, that Turkmenistan “absolutely should have a worthy operatic theatre and a worthy state circus”.

He noted that Ashgabat had only two cinemas, both badly dilapidated, and said that he would restore them as well as build a new cinema house. Libraries would be replenished with new books.

Mr Niyazov had described opera and ballet as alien to the “national mentality”. He demolished the opera and ballet theatre, closed the state circus and scrapped funding for cinemas and local libraries.

Instead, he splashed out millions of pounds in earnings from Turkmenistan's vast gas reserves on vanity projects, including a rotating gold statue of himself that always faced the sun. He built an ice palace, a ski resort and a 40-metre pyramid.

A collection of Turkmenbashi's thoughts, the Rukhnama (Book of the Spirit), was required reading in schools, workplaces and even as part of the driving test. Mr Niyazov also shortened compulsory schooling from ten years to nine and barred access to the internet.

He ruled with an iron fist from 1985 until his death from a heart attack aged 66 in December 2006. Other bizarre diktats included bans on lip-synching, car radios and beards, as well as the playing of recorded music at weddings.

Mr Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist, was Deputy Prime Minister when Turkmenbashi died and won 89 per cent of the vote last February in the country's first election since independence in 1991. Since then, he has gradually curbed the excesses of Turkmenbashi's reign.

He quietly dropped a golden symbol of Mr Niyazov from the corner of television screens in July. He reversed the cut in compulsory schooling, promised to send talented students to study abroad and opened a limited number of internet cafes.

He has also opened the door to foreign investors to develop the country's gas reserves, estimated to be the fifth largest in the world. Despite the huge potential riches, however, most of Turkmenistan's 5 million people still live in poverty.

In an apparent attempt to break further with Mr Niyazov's ideology, he described his reforms as part of a “New Revival” programme to promote a democratic market economy. The cultural thaw in a country once known as the North Korea of Central Asia has already led Mr Berdymukhamedov to encourage foreign embassies to stage film festivals in Ashgabat.

A festival of Japanese cinema was held last May and the United States screened a fortnight of films in October that opened, perhaps ironically, with Citizen Kane, Orson Welles's classic account of the rise and fall of a megalomaniac tycoon.

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