“My whole generation loved her, and her direct pupils adored her”

There was also direct communication with Alice Voinescu, Professor of Universal History of the Theatre at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. She usually held her classes in the Foundation’s conference room, opposite the Palace. The room was always full. Every year he would talk about something different. Greek tragedy, then Shakespeare, French classicism, Goethe…

Alice Voinescu was undeniably an ugly woman, but when she spoke about theatre, her figure was illuminated from within and from above. Her expressive and pathetic words evoked eras, writers, plays and characters with disturbing authenticity. We waited for Antigone or Hamlet to appear, for Phaedra to be called to account, for Faust to be defended against Mephisto. The masterpieces became familiar to us not through vulgarisation or pedantic detail, but through soul-to-soul transmission. Everything Alice Voinescu said became life, a higher life than everyday life, because it belonged to the theatre.

My whole generation loved her, and her direct students adored her.

I met her personally much later, through Lilli, who had her as a teacher. It was shortly after our return from Paris. She invited us to lunch. It was on this occasion that I met her husband Stello, an excellent lawyer, a man of the world, a brilliant “causeur”, but a little more sensitive than was appropriate to the temptations of Dionysus. Lunch was delicious. Alice looked at us with maternal emotion, and Stello machine-gunned us with paradoxes. For coffee, the women retired to the next room. We men – I was 25! – discussed politics and the courts. At one point, Stello stopped himself and said something like this to me: “Young man! In life, never put too much faith in the intelligence and seriousness of women. Mine, they say, is the smartest woman in Romania, yours can’t be too stupid, since she studied and became an actress. Well, after a lunch where we talked about Sophocles and Pirandello, what do you think they’re doing at this hour? Turn your head and look at them! They’re hitting the books! Goodbye to all that scholarship and transfiguration! If we leave them alone, they’ll show each other the sole of their feet. To see whose is prettier. Well, my lord, that would not be our business in a similar situation! Answer me, that’s the charm of it. I know it too well. Charm and scope…”

(Nicolae Carandino – White Nights and Dark Days, Eminescu Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992, pp. 64-65)