Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is our great pleasure to invite you to the 3rd BAROQUE FESTIVAL OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA, which this year will be devoted entirely to the music of George Frideric Haendel.
During the ceremonial inauguration of the event, on the 7th of September, in the Carmelite Church in Warsaw, we will hear MESSIAH – a monumental oratorio composed by Haendel in just 24 days in the early autumn of 1741. The Festival audience will have a rare opportunity to compare the musical language of this masterpiece with the master’s style developed in the opera genre: on the 17th of September, we will hear the staged concert version of IMENEO – one of the last dramme per musica in the composer’s career, written just several months earlier.
After all, Haendel was a true man of the theatre. For over twenty years, he spared no energy or financial resources to make the English audience fall in love with Italian opera. The Festival will present stagings of three out of over forty Haendel operas. On the 21st and 22nd of September, the stage will be taken over by the charming and passionate title characters of the opera ACIS AND GALATEA, whose happiness is interrupted by the cruel cyclops Poliphemus. The story about love, suffering, and immortality – taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses – is retold by director Natalia Kozłowska, famous for her bold interpretations. A completely different mood accompanies the story of RINALDO based on an episode from Tasso’s poem Jerusalem Delivered staged according to the concept of Jarosław Kilian. This picturesque staging with an intriguing set design by Dorota Kołodyńska will be presented on the 1st of October. The Festival will be crowned with two performances of RODELINDA – on the 7th and 8th of October. One of the most memorable of Haendel’s scores, which was a huge success on the stage of the King’s Theater in 1725, was brought to the stage of the Royal Theater by the Director of our institution, Andrzej Klimczak. As during other Festival events, the excellent soloists will be accompanied by the Period Instruments Ensemble of the Polish Royal Opera Capella Regia Polona, with attention to the historical performance practice appropriate for the Baroque era.
Tickets for all Festival events are available in the tab REPERTOIRE.
