“The Last Chess Game with Andrei Baleanu”, a collection of articles by different authors dedicated to actor and director Andrei Baleanu, was launched today by Ion-Gheorghe Svitchi, a friend of the late artist, Info-Prim Neo reports. The launch was attended by many public figures, friends and colleagues, including Moldova's first President Mircea Snegur, to whom Andrei Baleanu was a childhood friend and later a counselor on artistic matters. The book begins with an article authored by theater director Sandu Grecu and titled “A glorious name of the Bessarabian theater”. “A brilliant figure of the national art of theater, Andrei Baleanu represents, alongside the great names Valeriu Cupcea, Ion Ungureanu, Veniamin Apostol, Sandri Ion Scurea, Ilie Todorov and others, the golden generation of directors in post-war Moldova. If not for the tens of theatrical pieces by Andrei Baleanu, the Bessarabian theater wouldn't have lived the momentous change of the 1960s-70s”, Sandu Grecu writes. The title of book makes reference to Andrei Baleanu's passion for chess, poker, backgammon and “all sorts of ladies” (a pun on the Romanian name for checkers), explained artist Ion-Gheorghe Svitchi, remembering his last chess game with Andrei Baleanu in May 2000, two months before his passing. Andrei Baleanu was a director at the Pushkin Theater, today the National Theater Mihai Eminescu, and then was the artistic director of the National Culture and Arts Center. Baleanu staged much-acclaimed plays like “Despot-Voda”, “A Stormy Night”, “The Government Inspector”, “Romeo and Julieta” and many others.