Tag #122955 - Interview #101186 (Leizer Finchelstein)

Except for the Yiddish theatre, Jews who weren’t very well-to-do didn’t really go to the Romanian theatre. My wife recounts how she went for the first time to the National Theatre when she was in the first grade of primary school, and she saw the performance of “The Golden Pomegranate,” I believe. [Editor’s note: rhymed theatre play written in 1919 by Adrian Maniu in collaboration with Al. O. Teodoreanu, known as Pastorel.] She had won a ticket at a school lottery and she went there with her mother. All the spectators seated in the loges wore astrakhan fur coats and jewelry, she hadn’t seen such things before. When you entered the National Theatre, you took off your street shoes and put on the theatre shoes. Our neighborhoods were always muddy, especially when it rained. Most streets weren’t paved as they are nowadays. Those that were paved were paved with gravel from rivers which was permeated by the mud.