During Holy Week, the Bucharest National Opera presents two thematic performances dedicated to honoring the fundamental event of Christianity: the resurrection of Christ. Between April 14–20, 2025, audiences are invited to experience both a vocal-symphonic concert (Verdi’s Requiem, scheduled for Holy Wednesday, April 16) and a double opera performance (Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni and Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, scheduled for Holy Thursday, April 17). This is how the Bucharest National Opera extends its traditional Easter greeting: Christ is risen!
Messa da Requiem (by Giuseppe Verdi) – Holy Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 6:30 PM
On Holy Wednesday, the Bucharest National Opera will present a vocal-symphonic concert – Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem – in celebration of the Easter holiday and World Voice Day. Verdi composed this Requiem in memory of Italian writer and revolutionary Alessandro Manzoni, who had become a symbol of Italy’s national unification movement, known historically as the Risorgimento. Manzoni passed away on May 22, 1873, and exactly one year later, on May 22, 1874, Verdi premiered the Requiem in his honor at the Basilica of San Marco in Milan, conducting the performance himself.
Due to its emotional depth and musical grandeur, Verdi’s Messa da Requiem—initially titled Requiem for Manzoni—is considered by many critics to be the most frequently performed major choral work after Mozart’s unfinished Requiem. Admirers of Verdi often regard it as the most beautifully composed Requiem ever written.
Cavalleria Rusticana (by Pietro Mascagni) & Pagliacci (by Ruggero Leoncavallo) – Holy Thursday, April 17, 2025, 6:30 PM
With these two masterpieces of Italian verismo—Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci—the Bucharest National Opera invites the public to a cultural immersion in the bucolic yet emotionally charged and at times violent landscapes of southern Italy (Sicily and Calabria).
Both operas focus on humble rural communities and explore love triangles that end in tragedy. The choice to stage these operas on Holy Thursday is especially meaningful, as Cavalleria Rusticana is set during a major religious celebration: Catholic Easter.
From the reverent tolling of bells over a Sicilian village in Cavalleria Rusticana to a traveling troupe caught between fiction and reality in a Calabrian town in Pagliacci, audiences will be drawn into tales of love, betrayal, and fate, underscored by some of the most powerful music in opera history.
Tickets available at http://tickets.operanb.ro and at the Box Office of the Bucharest National Opera.