The Bucharest National Opera House gave start to the 2012-2013 season on Sunday, 16th September, a season which promises to be full of events. The details were offered to us by Cătălin Ionescu-Arbore, the head of the institution: 'We have new events just like in every other season, but also the usual repertoire. I am talking here about Giuseppe Verdi's A Masked Ball, a score favourite of the audience, but also by the performers because it is an opportunity for them to display their artistic qualities. We will strive, and with God's help we will succeed to suggest the audience a first edition of a classic dance festival, which will be held within November. It is an initiative which was missing for quite a long time, and even though this edition will be less rich in surprises and special attractions, probably out of financial reasons, the mere fact that it exists and that we want to hold this festival is, I believe, an important initiative.

We are also preparing to launch a world premiere with a Romanian title: O Scrisoare Pierduta, a very famous title by Caragiale; this time in an opera version. It is an opera written by Dan Dediu, and it is very worm, freshly taken out of the composer's creative oven, who is still working on finishing the orchestration for the second act; thus it is a very fresh and interesting music. I hope that this way we will manage to tear down those false walls which have been raised between the audience and what a Romanian opera creation means and the aversion which I see the audience to have towards this. Still, I hope to attract and convince them that even the Romanian creations deserve an honorable place next to all the other, let's say, opera literature hits.

Next year, because it is a double celebrated year - Wagner and Verdi, two opera music titans - we will try to meet with Tannhäuser and a little later on with Otello. These are two heavy titles, two important titles, which we will retake and present in next year's Enescu Festival edition.

Besides all this, The New Year's Eve Marathon, The Canto Contest, which marks next year its fifth edition, and we hope that step by step we will manage to fill up the whole repertoire with the season's regular surprises, anniversary shows, special guests from our country and abroad to fill in our cast, debuts, young talents, launched by us just as the marines launch their ships into the sea, and by the way, I invite you, in the last days of September, to see the show Carmen, in which new names, even debutants, will perform some very difficult and renowned roles, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that their importance will be noticed.

Also, on the 20^th of September, we will hold a gala which we have already announced since the Promenade from the 1^st of September; a gala of the graduates of the studiOpera project. It is a project which is getting ready to be finalised on 30^th October, an European project which I have uphold for three years with great success in my opinion, and which gives us the possibility to continue its activities.'