I would love to see Jesus Christ Superstar at Opera Maghiară Cluj.
There’s a tiny little problem: it’s in Cluj-Napoca.
Căci nu vă pară șagă: de la Neamț până la Iași e câtu-i de la Iași până la Neamț, nici mai mult, nici mai puțin.
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„Don’t take it as a joke: from Neamț to Iași is just as far as from Iași to Neamț, no more, no less.” (Ion Creangă – Amintiri din copilărie)
But for the Bucharest Opera Festival, the show came to Bucharest!
I jumped at the occasion and bought tickets to both performances that day.
For a context, I saw the musical two times:
- „Jesus Christ Superstar”, a 2006 interpretation of the famous rock opera – an impressive event – Blog de Olivian Breda.
- On Jesus Christ Superstar Musical (Glasgow, 2024.07.29-30) – Blog de Olivian Breda.
I also listened to it so much that the album of the musical is #1 on my Last FM Profile (I listened to this album the most). It’s also, again, on #5 on my list.
Some thoughts:
- I liked the show in Bucharest (2006) the most. The current one (June 2006) the second. And only on the third place the show I went specifically for to Glasgow (and London).
- There’s a quote I like from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997) – IMDb that I like a lot: „That’s Sandy Frink? What the hell was I thinking?”. See the small video. The quote, to be put in context, is when a lady sees a former crush in high school after many years. There are some videos with JCS 2006, Bucharest. When I look at them, I wonder why I liked the show so much when I saw it at that time. Still, the original emotion remains.
- For the show in 2025, the translations were very poor. Generally, you might wonder when reading translations, „Did they use AI/ChatGPT to translate it easier?”. In this case, it was way too human. They tried so much to use metaphors and explain things that you couldn’t understand the original English lyrics. By trying to stay away from ChatGPT and being human, they changed the original meaning of lyrics.
- All-in-all, I enjoyed the show in 2025, it was nice. I don’t think I’ll go anytime soon to Cluj-Napoca to see it, though.
- About the 2025 show – Is it a show I recommend? Yes, I do! While it’s not perfect, it’s pretty good.
