show category: Concert

OPERA APERTA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 2026

On Tuesday, 23 June, at 8:30 PM, the International Opera Aperta Festival 2026 presents SYMPHOPERA, a concert performed by the Royal Youth Orchestra of the “Transylvania” State Philharmonic in Cluj-Napoca, in the inner courtyard of Babeș-Bolyai University.

The concert will be conducted by Gregory Vajda, invited from Hungary, with Ruxandra Rus on flute and Vlad Oberșterescu on clarinet as the evening’s soloists.

The programme proposes an encounter between the symphonic repertoire and the world of opera, through works based on famous operatic pages or on themes made widely known through musical theatre. The concert opens with the Overture to Gioachino Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie, followed by Luigi Bassi’s Concert Fantasia on Themes from Verdi’s Rigoletto, for clarinet and orchestra.

The audience will then hear Georges Bizet / François Borne’s Carmen Fantasy, for flute and orchestra, a work that reimagines recognisable themes from Bizet’s opera in a virtuosic soloistic form. The programme concludes with Georges Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suites Nos. 1 and 2, orchestral pages drawn from the incidental music composed for Alphonse Daudet’s drama.

Through the title SYMPHOPERA, the concert brings to the forefront the ways in which opera repertoire and incidental music can be reinterpreted within a symphonic framework.

The event is presented by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.

The event has no interval and is expected to end around 10:00 PM.

Tickets are available on the bilete.ro platform.

Recommended age: 7+

The International Opera Aperta Festival is organised with the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Cluj-Napoca City Hall, the Cluj-Napoca Local Council, the Cluj County Council, the Cluj County Council, and the “Opera 2 You” Association.