Bucharest National Opera

Bucharest National Opera traces its institutional history to the Romanian operatic movement associated with George Stephănescu and to its establishment as a state institution in 1921. George Enescu conducted Wagner’s Lohengrin at the new institution’s inaugural performance on 8 December that year. For several decades the company worked in borrowed theatrical premises. Its own building opened on 9 January 1954, followed the next day by the ballet company’s presentation of Delibes’s Coppélia. Designed by a team led by Octav Doicescu, the theatre provided a permanent architectural setting for the institution’s opera and ballet ensembles.