The current season of the Romanian National Opera in Iași opened in September with a series of events celebrating the Giacomo Puccini Centenary. This month, the Iași Opera will present, among others, a performance as part of the Romanian Music Festival, as well as Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana". About the 2024-2025 season of the Romanian National Opera in Iași, Andrei Fermeșanu, acting general director:

This year saw the premiere of Puccini's "Turandot". The opening gala of the new season was also dedicated to Giacomo Puccini's centenary. Will there be other events celebrating the great Italian composer?

We opened the 68^th opera season of the Romanian National Opera in Iași, on the 8^th of September, with an open-air gala dedicated entirely to Puccini's works. We wanted to come before the public with arias mainly from operas that are perhaps less sung and I am referring here to "Manon Lescaut", "Gianni Schicchi", "La Rondine", "Le Villi". "Turandot", fortunately, has entered our repertoire with a spectacular premiere since the last season, directed by Rareș Zaharia and conducted by David Crescenzi, with a double cast. This is the third opera by the great Puccini, after "Tosca" and "Boema".

We continue this work somewhere at the end of November. We will come to our audience with a new title - Madama Butterfly. In the opera's history there have been two enactments, one in 1956, so a year after the opera was founded, and one in 1975, so, at a rough calculation, it has been 49 years since this opera premiered. We thought of a special solution. We know that the Romanian National Opera in Bucharest has an iconic production, I would say, with an enactment by the famous Jean Rânzescu, which is a living page in Romanian scenography and direction of international performances and thanks to the kindness of the director Daniel Jinga we will present it in Iași to our audience, because it is this classical atmosphere that this staging preserves, but it is very important that we manage to familiarize our audience in Iași with a new performance by Giacomo Puccini.

What can you tell us about the Romanian National Opera's participation in the Romanian Music Festival?

These days, large-scale events are taking place in Iași as part of the 26^th Romanian Music Festival. As always, opera is an integral part of these events. On the 20^th of October, in a few days' time, we will have the premiere of a show-coupé, "Făclia de Paști" by Alexandru Zirra and "O noapte furtunoasă" by Paul Constantinescu. "Făclia de Paști", was presented last season in concert form, but this time it will be directed and scenographed by Cristi Avram, directed by Bogdan Chiroșcă, and we hope it will be as well received as last year. Moreover, this evening, the public can meet a dance theater performance, choreographed by IoanTugearu, "D'alecarnavalului", to complete this week dedicated to Romanian music and artistic creations, because after all it is called the Romanian National Opera in Iași. These are attractive events for a genre of music that has perhaps not proliferated enough, but it is our institutional duty, which we fulfill with great love and perseverance, and which should not be absent from the concerns of every theater.

What are the events which we cannot miss of the current season of the Romanian National Opera in Iași?

In November we will have anniversary performances on the 2^nd and 3^rd, "Tosca". This is the show with which the Romanian National Opera in Iași began its artistic career in 1956, so a double cast on the 2^nd and 3^rd. At the same time, to amplify this week of celebration, when the Romanian National Opera in Iași puts on its festive robes, we have added an extraordinary conference with Mr. Ioan Holender and Mr. Sever Voinescu - "The stage and backstage, yesterday and today". It is a format that has already been presented in Timișoara, Cluj and Bucharest, and now it is coming to Iași. We are delighted with the experience and vast knowledge that they have and, we hope, it will be a memorable and, we hope, memorable meeting with our audience in Iași. This would be the program for the end of the year 2024. For the second part of the season, 2025, we are continuing work on what we hope will be a remarkable premiere of Gioachino Rossini's "Cenerentola". Incidentally, in Romania, when we say Rossini, in terms of opera, unfortunately we only say "The Barber". We want to take a step forward in the style of belcanto at the beginning of the 19^th century with this new production, for the time being we are still working on it, but opera lovers should know that we are still working, that we are concerned about bringing them novelties and maintaining the standard of interpretation that we have accustomed them to.