Time 19:00
The Royal Theatre in the Old Orangery in the Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw
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I hope to send you in a few weeks […] excerpts from my Halka, which I am publishing in spite of people’s ill will, in eternal memory that there used to be madmen who wrote Polish operas.
The bitter words that Stanisław Moniuszko wrote in a letter to his friend, Józef Sikorski, in 1850 are hardly surprising. After all, he was perfectly aware of how valuable Halka was – today, it belongs to the core repertoire of almost every Polish opera theater and is cherished as a groundbreaking work in the national history of the genre. In 1847, despite preparations for the Warsaw premiere, its score was put away on a shelf of the theater library for a decade.
Włodzimierz Wolski’s libretto, based on a folk tale, tells the story of unhappy and naive love between a simple highlander and a nobleman. The social themes of the story were the reason why the opera was accused of having an anti-patriotic tone (due to its sharp criticism of the attitudes of the higher social classes) and of being immoral. However, Moniuszko himself emphasized the context of social inequality using musical solutions – e.g. by combining pompous sound with a motif from a folk song, or hiding the additional meaning of the words spoken by the characters in the melodic line… He was certainly aware that the strength of Polishness lies not only in what is noble and Sarmatian but also in the richness of symbolism and folk tradition. The fundamental problems presented in the drama are universal and remain relevant to this day, hence the decision of director Wojciech Adamczyk to show Halka’s fate set in the reality of the 21st century.
MUSIC DIRECTION DAWID RUNTZ
INSTRUMENTATION AND SCORING MICHAŁ DOBRZYŃSKI
DIRECTOR, LIGHTING DESIGN WOJCIECH ADAMCZYK
SET DESIGN, VIDEO PROJECTIONS ZUZANNA GRZEGOROWSKA
COSTUMES MARIA BALCEREK
CHORUS MASTER JAKUB SZAFRAŃSKI
II CONDUCTOR KAROL SZWECH
ASISTANT DIRECTORS AGNIESZKA KOZŁOWSKA, SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK
STAGE MANAGER AGNIESZKA ORLIKOWSKA
CAST
CZEŚNIK ADAM KRUSZEWSKI
ZOFIA ANNA FARYSEJ
JANUSZ ROBERT SZPRĘGIEL
MARSHAL SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK
HALKA NATALIA RUBIŚ
JONTEK KAMIL ZDEBEL
TOWNSMAN JAKUB A. GRABOWSKI
EXTRAS, MIMES MAJA BILEK, MACIEJ JAN KRAŚNIEWSKI, BARTŁOMIEJ MARSZAŁEK, DANIEL MOSIOR, TOMASZ MUSIAŁOWICZ, MARTA PIECZUL, KRZYSZTOF SKARŻYŃSKI, MICHAŁ WOLNY
THE CHORUS OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA
THE ORCHESTRA OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA
CONDUCTOR DAWID RUNTZ
Duration: 1h 45 min (with an intermission).
The seats in the auditorium are not numbered.
PLEASE NOTE: the entrance to the Royal Theatre in the Łazienki Park is located in Agrykola street.
