Mihai Eminescu National Theatre of Moldova: 100th anniversary of foundation

Chisinau, 19 July /MOLDPRES/ - The 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre (TNME) with status of national theatre will be marked on 6 October. The institution’s foundation was influenced by more initiatives coming from personalities of the Romanian culture and culture institutions. The today’s subject is titled, A Caragiale in Chisinau intimidated by the Stalinist ideology.  

Contacted by MOLDPRES, TNME director Petru Hadarca said that the staging of the play, A Lost Letter, by Ion Luca Caragiale in 1952 in the full swing of the Stalinist times, had been an unusual event.   

According to Hadarca, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Caragiale was marked in 1952. The World Peace Organization, an institution guided by the Soviets from the shadow, declared the 1952 year as Caragiale Year internationally. Given that the Romanian classical writers were banned in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (RSSM), a special approach was needed, in order to receive the agreement of the higher institutions. Actor Eugeniu Ureche, literary secretary Vsevolod Anghel and the chief stage manager Daniil Bondarenco were in audience at the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. The proposal was approved on one condition – to translate the text into the ‘’Moldovan language.’’ Eugene Ureche said that the first reaction was to refuse this. Yet, after certain hesitations, the delegates accepted this condition. And the play was ‘’translated.’’      

”Eugeniu Ureche made both the stage management and the scene painting,’’ Hadarca also said.