The Gala Concert performed on Sunday evening by the Orchestra of the Bucharest National Opera on the stage of Italy's Ravello Festival marked the conclusion of the Romanian half of the Romania-Italy Cultural Year 2026, a six-month programme dedicated to promoting Romanian culture in Italy through cultural diplomacy.

The event took place against the backdrop of Villa Rufolo, one of the festival's iconic venues, and represented the closing moment of a programme that included more than 50 events held in some of Italy's most important cultural spaces.

The programme brought together hundreds of artists and numerous institutional partners from Romania and Italy, while hundreds of thousands of people discovered Romania through its heritage, creativity and European values. At the same time, it contributed to strengthening relations between the two countries and developing new institutional partnerships.

The concert in Ravello also carried a strong symbolic significance, bringing together the musical worlds of George Enescu and Niccolo Paganini. The Orchestra of the Bucharest National Opera performed under the baton of conductor Daniel Jinga, alongside violinist Alexandru Tomescu, who played the Stradivarius Elder-Voicu violin.

According to Romania's Ambassador to Italy, Gabriela Dancau, the event demonstrated that Romanian artistic excellence represents one of the most credible and valuable forms of promoting Romania internationally. She also highlighted the contribution of the team at the Romanian Embassy in Italy, the Romanian institutional network in Italy, and partner institutions from both countries to the success of the programme.

'The Romanian half of the Romania-Italy Cultural Year is coming to an end, but what remains is infinitely more important than the calendar of a programme: strengthened relations, new institutional friendships, projects that will continue, and the conviction that, in a Europe undergoing constant transformation, culture remains one of the most powerful instruments for dialogue, trust and bringing peoples closer together,' Romania's Ambassador to Italy, Gabriela Dancau, said.

The Romania-Italy Cultural Year 2026 was conceived as a major cultural diplomacy programme aimed at promoting Romanian heritage and creativity, strengthening cultural cooperation and bringing Romanian and Italian societies closer through culture.

The programme was designed to take place over two complementary semesters. The first semester, held from December 2025 to July 2026, was dedicated to promoting Romanian culture in Italy.

The second semester, dedicated to promoting Italian culture in Romania, was inaugurated on June 2 with the performance 'Gala Opera Italiana', held at the Bucharest National Opera and organised by the Italian Embassy in collaboration with the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma and the Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest, according to the Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest.

As part of the events included in the Italian semester of the Cultural Year, the Italian Cultural Institute also contributed to organising the Italian section of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS), held from June 19 to 18. During FITS, on 27 June, Italy's Ambassador to Romania, Laura Aghilarre, attended the ceremony marking the unveiling of a star on Sibiu's Walk of Fame dedicated to director, theatre actress and playwright Emma Dante, and accepted the award on her behalf. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Mariana Ionescu: EN - writing by: Cristina Zaharia)