Venue: Iași National Theatre
Address: Str. Bârsescu Agatha 18, municipiul Iași
Town: Iași, RO

The Iași National Theatre (or Vasile Alecsandri National Theater; in Romanian: Teatrul Național Vasile Alecsandri) in Iași, Romania, is the oldest national theatre and one of the most prestigious theatrical institutions in Romania. In 1956, it was given the name of the renowned Romanian playwright and poet Vasile Alecsandri. The building also hosts the Iași Romanian National Opera. The first dramatic play presented in the Romanian language (and one of the first theatrical performance in Romanian) was Mirtil and Hloe, adapted and staged by Gheorghe Asachi, and held in the capital (Jassy/Iași) of Moldavia, on 27 December 1816. In 1834, a Romanian production took place in Iași on the stage of the Théâtre de varieté, built in 1832 for the French Fouraux troupe. The National Theatre was founded on 15 May 1840, as the Great Theatre of Moldavia, when the Romanian language troupe, led by Costache Caragiali, was united with the French troupe, under a single direction of Vasile Alecsandri and the management of Costache Caragiali. On 22 December 1846, a new audience hall was inaugurated in the former mansion of Prince Mihail Sturdza, on the Hill of Copou. On the night of 17/18 February 1888, the theatre building was destroyed by the fire. Efforts to build the new theatre edifice culminated in 1894 when a contract was signed with the Viennese architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, who designed several theatres and palaces across Europe, including the theatres in Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Timișoara and Chernivtsi (Romanian: Cernăuți). For the building work, a contract was signed with a Bucharest company, and the power station was built by a company from Berlin. The Theatre’s power station also supplied with electricity the 12 electric-arc lamps lighting the Theatre Square, marking the beginning of electrification in the city of Iași. The works to building took two years, and on 1 and 2 December 1896, the inauguration festivities took place with Flechtenmacher's National Ove