National Opera House

Following a long tradition of collaboration between Romanian and Italian ballet and opera companies. In the late 1800s, composer and conductor George Stephănescu tried, together with many other Romanian artists, to persuade the authorities to establish a lyrical theater subsidized by the state budget. He established an opera company, whose launch took place on 8 May 1885. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the people of Bucharest and not only them could boast an active cultural life, supported in the opera field. It was only in 1921, that the Opera Society received the necessary funds to meet the institutionalization criteria, becoming the Romanian Opera. This was also due to the Minister of Arts and Cults, poet Octavian Goga, also the husband of a famous soprano of that time, Veturia Goga.

After 1950, the Opera finally receives a headquarters meant to replace the one at the National Theatre, destroyed by the bombing of the capital during the war. Thus, the enhanced conditions offered allowed for the creation of lyrical and choreographic productions of prime importance.

The inauguration of the new building was marked by the premiere, on 9 January 1954, of the opera The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a performance followed by the premiere of the ballet Coppélia by Léo Delibes, on 10 January 1954, in a production signed by master choreographer Anton Romanowski. Naturally, a period of great artistic growth followed, the repertory also including Romanian works.