Celanaa‚¬a„¢s final curtain call of the season at the Bucharest National Opera

Newsroom 11/02/2011 | 13:43

“Celan”, a co-production with the Bremen Theater and an homage to Paul Celan, the pen name of Paul Antschel, a Hebrew poet of Romanian origins, made its debut at The Bucharest National Opera on November 28. Now, the time has come for the final representation of the season, on February 18, starting at 18.30.

The opera, composed by Peter Ruzicka, was very well received at previous representations in Dresden, Mainz, Darmstadt, Köln and Bremen. Conductor Vlad Conta is the musical director of the opera, which is constructed as a seven-scene biography of Celan (1920 – 1970), during his stay in his hometown Cernauti, then in Bucharest, Vienna and Paris. The center stage of the spectacle is taken by the Holocaust and its impact on the poet, both from a personal as well as literary perspective.

At the Bucharest National Opera, a consistent team has worked for the preparation of this spectacle. Musical management belongs to conductor Vlad Conta, direction is signed by Vera Nemirova and direction assistants were Patric Seibert and Irina Macovei. The setting was created by Stefan Heyne, costumes are signed by Klaus Noack, lights direction is insured by Cornel Vladu. He Bucharest National Opera Choir is lead by Stelian Olariu. The musical preparation of the preparation belonged to Liana Mares, Mihaela Valcea and Sabin Orbulescu

The opera, although successful in Germany, was not solely positively embraced by critics. Some, as observatorulcultural.ro reports, considered that a subject as the Holocaust could not be represented musically. However, others conceded that if Celan could write poetry after Auschwitz, so can music be written about the Holocaust.