Armenian actor. He was one of the three Abelian (or Abelyan) brothers who each became noteworthy personalities in different aspects of Armenian culture and history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hovhannes became one of the stars of Armenian theater for more than fifty years. In 1886 he moved from Baku to Tbilisi, the main Armenian cultural center of the Caucasus and entered the playgroup of the Armenian Dramatic Club. He lived and played between Tiflis and Baku for the next two decades, and became an unsurpassed interpreter of the works of famous playwright Shirvanzade (Alexander Movsisian, 1858-1935), who incidentally was his cousin. He played some 300 roles in his long career, including plays by Gabriel Sundukian, Levon Shant, and Hagop Baronian, but also works by Russian and European playwrights, from Nikolai Gogol to William Shakespeare. In 1908 Abelian joined forces with another famous Armenian actor, Armen Armenian (1871-1965) to form the Abelian-Armenian Theater Group which began a three-year long tour of Armenian cities and communities in Eastern Armenia, the Caucasus, Western Armenia, Iran, and Turkey. In 1909 it went to Constantinople and another famous actor Hovhannes Zarifian (1879-1936) joined them. After several performances in the Ottoman capital, following the cultural revival brought by the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908, the Abelian-Armenian-Zarifian Theater Group divided into three branches, which performed in Smyrna (Izmir), Anatolia, and the third one, led by Abelian and Zarifian, in Izmit, Bardizag, Adapazar, Eskishehir, and Rodosto (Tekirdag). They ended their run in 1911, with performances in Baku, Nor Nakhichevan, and Moscow. During the 1910s, Abelian—who was equally qualified to play in Armenian and Russian productions—continued his professional activities and performed in the Caucasus, but also in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, as well as Iran and Central Asia. He left the Caucasus in September 1920 and moved abroad with his family. For the next three years, he performed in Constantinople, Smyrna, Cairo, Alexandria, Berlin, (where he played "Othello" with a German group, performing his signature role of Othello in Armenian), Paris, Brussels, and London. He arrived in the United States in 1923 and performed in many communities on the East Coast and the Midwest for the next two years. However, Abelian's aim was not to stay abroad, and in 1925 he accepted an invitation from the government of Soviet Armenia to settle in Yerevan. He was conferred with the title of Popular Artist of the Republic in 1925 and entered the First Theater (now the Sundukian Theater). He would continue to play with the same enthusiasm and talent of his younger years until his death on the stage, in Yerevan, at the age of 71. The dramatic theater of Vanadzor, Armenia's third largest city, bears his name.