Operetta and musicals aficionados will have a new theater building to enjoy such shows in Bucharest. The Operetta Theater will inaugurate its new building on Saturday, January 24, following EUR 8.7 million investments from the Culture Ministry. Andrew Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera musical will kick off the new season at the operetta in the new building, located on the Octavian Goga boulevard, close to the National Library. Tickets for the first shows sold out in hours, but the theater also sells 40 tickets without reserved seating for each of the shows on January 24, 25, , as well as for the two extra ones set for January 27 and 28. These can be purchased on the door, only 15 minutes before the start of each show.

The Phantom of the Opera show is directed by Stephen Barlow. The second batch of shows, starring the Voice of Romania finalist Adrian Nour, soprano Irina Baiant and the XFactor Romania winner Florin Ristei, will take place in February, but ticket sales are yet to start. The Operetta sells tickets online here. 

Work on the new Operetta building started in 2012. Now completed, the three-storey building provides 6,300 sqm, and has a 550 seating capacity. The investment also covered new equipment for high complexity musicals. The building also hosts a bookstore, a coffee shop, a studio for kids, and a foyer that can become an ad-hoc show stage. Rehearsal rooms and booths for artists, a costume warehouse, and technical spaces are also part of the project.

This is the first musical theater building developed in Romania after the fall of Communism. A National Bucharest Opera company, the Operetta and Musical Theater Ion Dacian has been organizing its shows in spaces leased out from various institutions, including in the building adjoining the National Theater. After a fire affected the Theater in 2005, the Operetta moved in a hall at the Ministry of Interior for two years, then back to the National Theater until 2011. Since 2011, when the Theater started renovating its building, the Operetta has been on a national tour.

editor@romania-insider.com