Lend Me a Tenor – or Big Smoke at the Opera in Bukarest

We’re not talking actually about singers here, Lend Me a Tenor was only one of Ken Ludwig’s comedies which was successfully featured for years at the Nottara Theatre in Bucharest and translated into Romanian as Big Smoke at the Opera. My thoughts were that the Romanian translation was relevant for the kind of tabloid recipe: a mixture between indignation and the satisfaction of the readers but not necessarily ballet goers peeping into the wings. If anything, big smoke is the political stage of the country – increasingly tormented, with ministers being appointed and sacked so often that they don’t have the time to grasp the situation which they are supposed to manage and only getting to decide on changes over various topics at their own whim without any public consultation. Once publicised, the changes become mandatory no matter how silly they are. The next minister-to-be, coming possibly from a totally different background, will have totally different opinions and priorities.

Let us take an example. A ballet master without a higher studies degree will be taken on a short-term contract, but if the Opera is happy with his performance, wishes to hire him permanently and has the right vacancy they will not be allowed to do so. This was the case with Francisc Strnad, whom the Romanian National Opera in Iasi had to give up after two years of fruitful collaboration. Strnad graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow in 1978 and has undertaken the courses for ballet masters organized by the Ministry of Culture back in the ’80’s, has had a career as a principal dancer (and coach) with the „Oleg Danovski” Ballet Theatre in Constanta. He also had for several years been a coach with the Ballet School of the Vienna Opera, but as he was not a graduate of a university choreography department, this was not good enough in the eyes of the law for him to be hired. Having a university degree would have been impossible for him since there were no choreography departments in Romania before the ’90’s and this is not the kind of degree one can get remotely later in life. Moreover, he had just turned down an offer of the Novi Sad Theatre in Serbia, who did not have the same bureaucratic requirements, before realising that he could not have a long-lasting contract with the Iasi Opera.
How did this happen?