The comedy “Titanic waltz” by playwright Tudor Mușatescu had 35 curtain rises, at a single performance.
The playwright and novelist Tudor Muşatescu was born in Câmpulung Muscel, on February 22, 1903. “I loved this countryside, the people and the porches, the drizzles and the parks, the children and the pensioners… I loved, in a word, all the goods that this picturesque and, for me, unique city in the world offered me- o on his sun stalls, in his flower baskets and on the toboggan runs”Tudor Muşatescu testified about the fair of his adolescence, which he made immortal in his capatâi play.
He graduated from the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy and the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest in 1924, according to the volume “General Dictionary of Romanian Literature”.
He wrote sketches, novels, plays, but his true vocation turned out to be theater, especially comedy, Tudor Muşatescu being considered by critics “a faithful successor, in the interwar period, of the Caragialian comedy of manners” (Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu ), by typology, situations and spiritual dialogues, according to artline.ro.
Tudor Mușatescu PHOTO Metropolis newspaper
He regularly collaborated, from 1919, to the “Rampa” magazine, as well as to humorous magazines and illustrated stores. As a dramatist, he debuted in 1923 with the play “Focurile de pe comori”, written in French and performed in Paris. In 1925, two other plays, “TTR” and “Datoria”, were performed on the stage of the Theater in Craiova. “Pantărola” (1928) and “Sosesc deseără” (1931) followed, plays through which he tried to rehabilitate vaudeville, according to the volume “Dicţionarul general al literaturii romane” (Univers Enciclopedic Publishing House, 2005).
He established himself with the comedy in three acts “Titanic Waltz”, which had its premiere in November 1932, at the National Theater in Bucharest, being also represented in many European cities.
His son, Bogdan Muşatescu, an actor in his own right, who died in 2017, said that “Titanic Waltz” had 35 curtain rises, at a single performance.
The comedy of manners became a film in 1964, directed by Paul Călinescu, with a brilliant cast: Grigore Vasiliu-Birlic, Silvia Fulda, Coca Andronescu, Ion Finteşteanu and Mihai Fotino.
Tudor Mușatescu told how his characters were born: “I have been asked, many times, if the characters in «Titanic Waltz» and the subject of the song existed in reality. Yes, they existed, and everything that happens in Titanic Waltz happened in reality, and right at Campulung.
Of course, not all the facts happened within the same family. Tache Necșulescu's legacy…was left to a poor family, a clerk at the prefecture, but Miza's love affair with the cavalry lieutenant happened in a completely different family. As, in another family, the mother-in-law and wife paid to see their son-in-law and husband become a deputy without his knowledge and will. As for the characters, they were always taken directly from my great and inexhaustible supplier, which was, is, and will be: reality.” said the playwright.
Writer Tudor Musatescu Collection www.comunismulinromania.ro
In 1926 he published the first and only volume of poems, “Vitrinele toamnei”. Equally appreciated plays were the satire dedicated to politics and politicians, “…Escu” (1933), but also “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (1937). He also wrote comedies in collaboration with Sică Alexandrescu: “Figure from Dorohoi”, “On the green grass”, “Rooster theory”, “Miss Romania”, “Birlic”, according to https://www.artline.ro/.
He also made successful adaptations of many plays, among them: “Coana Chiriţa”, “A famous crime”, “Tuşca”, “Miserabilii”. He prefaced collections of cheerful sketches by Romanian and foreign authors and wrote a collection of “Couplets and humorous skits” (1950). He translated, in collaboration, from K. Capek, Mayakovsky, Ilf and Petrov. Tudor Mușatescu died on November 4, 1970.
In the last interview given in 1970, shortly before he died, the playwright said: “If I admit one credit to myself as a dramatist it is that any of my characters, pricked with a needle, will bleed living, human blood“accordingly https://www.ziarulmetropolis.ro/.
