The Casa Muzicii in Lugoj, a town in western Romania with a particularly vital tradition of choral music-making, has a number of memorial rooms dedicated to the different composers associated with the town. Filaret Barbu, a native of Lugoj, has perhaps the strongest claim of all, since the actual house was his. He died in Timisoara, where had he spent his last years, in 1984; the next year the Casa Muzicii moved to the house, owned then by the state.
BARBU MUSEUM Photo Gallery
The house is just across the river from the main part of Lugoj. There is a display for Barbu, a choral conductor and operetta composer and a pupil of Ion Vidu, in the main room on the ground floor, with posters, pictures and programmes of the Corul Ion Vidu, of which he was conductor for many years. He also shares a room on the upper floor with the tenor Traian Grozavescu, another eminent Lugojan whose international operatic career was cut short when he was murdered by his wife in a crime passionel; the local theatre bears his name. The Barbu exhibits include an oil portrait and a death mask, his small harmonium, a table with such personal items as his glasses, his tuning-fork, his cloth cap and his writing implements, as well as pictures of the Corul Ion Vidu under his direction.
