Opera

Echoes

On 20 November 1921 an enthusiastic letter written by the poet Cincinat Pavelescu is published in Rampa, a letter which we see fit to transcribe in full: Dear Mr. Editor in Chief, My life's absorbing activities of incessant work at the head of a newspaper without any

The Lord Of Romanian Conducting

After almost a century of symphonic music in Romania (as early as in 1846-1848, the first symphonic concerts changed the artistic life of Bucharest), after three quarters of a century since the establishment of the first philharmonic in Bucharest (1868), a magician appeared

Echoes: Excerpts From The Farewell Concert

In an obituary published in the Tages Anzeiger of Zurich, Mario Gerteis draws a suggestive portrait of Celibidache in his youth. A nervous fiery ball, halfway between histrionics and insight, between passion and obsession. His dark locks hanging over his face in disorder,

The Last Saint Of Music

Among all 20th-century great Romanian conductors, indubitably the most extravagant, original, paradoxical maestro of the baton remained Sergiu Celibidache. Perhaps only Herbert von Karajan enjoyed the status of absolute star during his life time as the Romanian conductor

The Romanian School Of Conductors

It is no secret to anyone that in Romania every person who has a good voice and musical talent has sung at least once, in his or her youth, in a choir. People say about Banat, the western region on the boundary with Hungary and Yugoslavia that it is the land of choirs, because

Traditional And Modern

Showing the electors' arrival in Frankfurt due to the crowning of Joseph II as King of Rome, Goethe mentions the fact that among the most obedient and distinguished personalities some had ridden to Frankfurt according to the old traditional custom, while others had

The Passage

1. You open one door and there appears another, then another, and another, up to the last one – which does not even exist – and thus you find yourself at the first door – which does not even exist – and you make a round, once more, unto familiar places, as what you

The Nightmarish Dreaming Of Max Blecher

The reverie aims to take hold of imaginary territories when the real ones are missing. Max BLECHER In his novels and especially in Occurrences in Current Unreality this process of dreaming turns into an account of an immediate unreality. I-mediated to be more accurate,

The Lightened Burrow

excerpts When I call up one of these memories with my eyes closed and it is reborn with the intensity of its previous reality; when at other times, with the same intensity and in the same convincing light, settings and events which never happened pass through my mind; when

Mateiu I. Caragiale

Mateiu Caragiale left us a literary heritage, fragmentary in its outlook that puzzled and amazed through its originality, through an appetite for mystery it seemed to originate in, through the secret inspiration that fed it and through its old-fashioned lyricism which was

Algazy & Grummer

* Algazy is a nice old man with a toothless smile, his beard shaven and silky, neatly laid out on a grill that is screwed under his chin and surrounded by barbed wire… Algazy does not speak any European languages… but if you wait for him first thing in the morning and

Emil Gayk

Gayk is the only civilian with a rifle carrier on his left shoulder. His neck is drawn in and his morale very high. He will not be hostile towards anybody for long, but from his way of eyeing you, the direction his pointed nose takes sometimes, the air about him that he