lit a candle 2h agoMy grandmother used to put on recordings of the Pushkin Theatre plays when I stayed with her in Halifax, she was from Chisinau and never stopped missing it. I didn't understand a word of Romanian but I remember her pointing at the screen and saying that's Madan, he's the real thing. Strange to be sitting here at 23 reading that he's gone at 77, half a world away from where she used to watch him.
Their story
Veaceslav Madan was a Moldovan actor, theatre director, teacher, Culture Minister and diplomat whose working life moved from the stage in Chisinau to government and then to ambassadorial posts in the Balkans. He died on 29 September 2026 at the age of 77. The Ministry of Culture of the Republic…
Veaceslav Madan was a Moldovan actor, theatre director, teacher, Culture Minister and diplomat whose working life moved from the stage in Chisinau to government and then to ambassadorial posts in the Balkans. He died on 29 September 2026 at the age of 77. The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova issued condolences the same day. No cause of death has been made public.
Madan was born on 27 November 1948 in Cojusna, Straseni district, then in the Moldavian SSR. He graduated from the acting faculty of the G. Muzicescu Institute of Arts in Chisinau in 1974 and later completed advanced directing courses at GITIS in Moscow in 1988. He began as an actor at the A. S. Pushkin Musical-Dramatic Theatre (today the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre), co-directed Ion Creanga's Soacra cu trei nurori with V. Cupcea, staged Gorin's Memorial Prayer at the A. P. Chekhov Russian Drama Theatre after a Lencom internship under Mark Zakharov, led the Ginta Latina theatre from 1992 to 1994, created the national musical Miorita with composer Liviu Stirbu, and served as chief director of the Chekhov theatre from 1994 to 2002 while teaching at the arts institute. He also appeared in Moldova-film productions and was named Om Emerit in Arte in 1998.
He entered government as First Deputy Minister of Culture from 14 September 2001 to 23 December 2002, then Minister of Culture from 23 December 2002 to 19 April 2005 under Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev and President Vladimir Voronin. From 7 November 2005 to 30 April 2009 he was Moldova's ambassador to Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia, now North Macedonia. Those posts made him one of the artists of his generation who carried a theatre background into high public office.
Colleagues and the Ministry of Culture remembered a figure who had shaped Moldovan theatre as performer, director and teacher before carrying that cultural brief into cabinet and diplomacy. Realitatea.md reported his death on the afternoon of 29 September 2026, moldovenii.md updated its encyclopaedia entry, and English Wikipedia recorded the same death date. Tributes stressed both his stage craft and his years forming younger actors and directors in Chisinau.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), Realitatea.md (Vlada Ciorici, 29 Sep 2026), moldovenii.md, Ministry of Culture statement. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“In the period 2002-2005, Veaceslav Madan exercised the office of Minister of Culture of the Republic of Moldova, contributing to the development of the cultural field.”
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova, condolence statement reported by Realitatea.md, 29 September 2026
Photos
1by People Forever
that's a lovely thing to have from her, thank you for sharing it