The Opera Oedipus by George Enescuand the opera-oratorio Meşterul Manole / Stonemason Manole bySigismund Toduţă – two facets of Romanian spirituality

Abstract

Starting from a statement Franz Liszt once made, that “The poet or the artist sometime manages to encapsulate the aspiration for beauty of a people or an age. In their works, they manage to perfectly reflect the representative types that people or age wishes to imitate.”

The present text focuses on two ample vocal-symphonic pieces – George Enescu’s opera Oedipus and Sigismund Toduţă’s opera-oratorio Meşterul Manole / Stonemason Manole – whose first auditions took place at a distance of almost half century from each other (1936 and 1985
respectively) in distinct stages in the development of the Romanian music, as well as in the cultural and political configuration of the Romanian people. Far from attempting to be a comprehensive presentation of the two pieces which are of similar value according to the musical critics and counted as masterpieces, the paper points out several distinctive features they have and discusses them from the perspective of certain aesthetic and philosophical ideas that center round Romanian spirituality within its overall evolution and with its distinct stages circumscribed by the various circumstances.