UNA

The Conductor

The Romanian realm has given great creating spirits to the world, in all fields of activity: philosophers, historians, sociologists, scientists that made epoch-making discoveries, inventors, writers (poets, prose writers, and dramatists), brilliant musicians, painters, and

A Hero Without His Right Wing

Far from his country, across the ocean, in 1957, while he conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in New York, conductor Ionel Perlea had a heart attack. He had the courage and most of all the strength to go on conducting until he finished the Ode to Joy, after which he

I May Count Myself As Having Been Born Under A Lucky Star

As early as my years of instruction, while at The Academy of Music in Bucharest – as part of the group of the grand and incomparable professional singer and mentor Constantin Stroescu (Enrico Caruso's partner in Boston, 1915, in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) – destiny

Echoes

Aida, March 17, 1920. I waited for it. With the justifiable, feverish impatience you feel before an ideal dream comes true!, wrote the Rampa magazine on March 18, 1920, hailing the opening of the first lyrical season. People liked the cheap, but very beautiful stage design,

Three Romanian Conducting Maestros In One

Of all the great 20th century conductors, Egizio Massini was the only one who distinguished himself equally in three different fields (opera, symphonic music, and fanfare). Even if he made tours abroad conducting all threes types of music, opera was the genre that distinguished

Letters

Enescu:Dear Georgescu,This is what I got from professor Hajak (Targu Mures). He plays well and it would be a good policy to have him play one of the concertos he proposed with the Philharmonic. I did not mean to bother you with this matter, but he insists, as you can see.

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

A Portrait In Smithereens

At night, when sleep is slow to come in a somewhat strange bed, you listen tensely to any sort of noise and try to decode the shades momentarily cast by car lights on the white of the walls. That is how I realized she was there, waiting on the threshold of the door. You

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,

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

Gellu Naum

(1. 08. 1915-29. 09. 2001) Gellu Naum (1915-2001) was the only writer pertaining to the historical Romanian surrealist avant-garde who survived, rather untouched but also more or less unheard, the vicissitudes of a half a century of Communist rule. He started publishing