Nicolae Bretan

Nicolae Bretan (; 25 March 1887 – 1 December 1968) In 1916, he received a degree in law at the University of Cluj. In addition to composing, Bretan held various positions as baritone singer, actor, stage director, and director-general. He made his professional debut as a singer in 1913 in Bratislava, continuing to roles in Oradea and at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, where he served as first baritone from 1922 to 1940. Over his career he performed works by Verdi, Gounod, Bizet, Puccini, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Delibes, and Rossini. Bretan also worked as a translator of libretti, translating his own Luceafărul into Hungarian and Golem into Romanian and German. In 1915 Bretan married pianist Nora Osvát. Together they had two children: (baritone) and Judit (actor and educator). In 1944, Osvát’s family, who were Jewish, were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp and murdered. Refusing to become a member of the Romanian Communist Party in 1948, he was not favoured by the Romanian communist regime, who treated the composer as a “non-person”. Biographer Hartmut Gagelmann attributes Bretan’s lack of wider recognition to censorship by the Communist Party of Romania, though this claim