Time 19:00
The Royal Theatre in the Old Orangery in the Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw
BUY TICKET
Work commissioned by the Polish Royal Opera.
Opera in two acts.
Adaptation of the libretto: Michał Dobrzyński
based on the manuscripts (including previously unpublished fragments) of the drama Historia (Operetta) by Witold Gombrowicz.
Ja mam głos. Nie możecie odebrać mi głosu. […]
Niech moja bosa noga towarzyszy
Mym ustom…
będę mówił, boso…
I have a voice. You cannot take my voice away. […]
Let my bare foot accompany
My mouth…
I shall speak, barefoot…
– this is the first declaration of Witold, the opera’s main character and an incarnation of Gombrowicz himself. A seventeen-year-old boy – shoeless – stands against his own family and the hollow social ideals they embody, as well as the architects of great History. The father, mother, and siblings of the famous playwright are incorporated into the storyline, with their distinctive personality traits, even the tones of their voices, reflected in the music. In the second act, historical figures take the stage – among them Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor Wilhelm II, and Józef Piłsudski. The intertwining personal and political threads create a mosaic of meanings, a grotesque entanglement of real and imagined events. What was supposed to be a “musical comedy” becomes an image of longing for non-entanglement, for freedom from “form”, from “mouth”, from “costume”, from “shoe”, from the deceptiveness of the world, from small and great history.
Michał Dobrzyński pulls double duty as both composer and librettist. The opera’s libretto was developed based on Witold Gombrowicz’s unfinished play Historia, including fragments that have never been published before, with copies of the manuscripts personally provided to the composer by Mrs. Rita Gombrowicz. In this way, Michał Dobrzyński returns to the creative concept that inspired his Operetta, drawing from the literary origins of the work he completed in 2015. “One of the main tasks of my writing is to break through Unreality to Reality,” Gombrowicz once said, and Michał Dobrzyński uses the universal language of music to translate this concept into a new artistic dimension. The unfinished play offers ample scope for musical interpretation – as the composer himself emphasizes: “The clarity of thought and the almost striking legibility of Gombrowicz’s symbolic characters […] seem to resonate in a unique way with a story that continues to unfold before our very eyes today.”
MUSICAL DIRECTION KAROL SZWECH
DIRECTED BY MACIEJ WOJTYSZKO, JAKUB KROFTA
SET DESIGNER WOJCIECH STEFANIAK
COSTUMES DOROTA (DOROTHÉE) ROQUEPLO
CHORUS MASTER JAKUB SZAFRAŃSKI
LIGHTING DESIGN PIOTR PAWLIK
VIDEO PROJECTIONS MAREK ZAMOJSKI
ASSISTENT CONDUCTOR KLAUDIA MAZUR
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK, AGNIESZKA KOZŁOWSKA
STAGE MANAGERS WANDA KARPIŃSKA, TATIANA HEMPEL-GIERLACH
CAST
WITOLD (COUNTERTENOR) / ALBERTYN MICHAŁ SŁAWECKI
WITOLD (SOPRANO) IWONA LUBOWICZ
MOTHER / EMPRESS MAŁGORZATA PAŃKO-EDERY
FATHER / PROFESSOR / EMPEROR NICHOLAS II / EMPEROR WILHELM II / PIŁSUDSKI ROBERT GIERLACH
JANUSZ / RASPUTIN / PRINCE VON PLESS / WIENIAWA DŁUGOSZOWSKI ŁUKASZ HAJDUCZENIA
JERZY / PRINCE VON EULENBURG / ADAŚ MAUERSBERGER WITOLD ŻOŁĄDKIEWICZ
RENA MONIKA LEDZION-PORCZYŃSKA
ALBERTYNA / KRYSIA JOANNA FRESZEL
HINDENBURG PIOTR HALICKI
LUDENDORFF SYLWESTER SMULCZYŃSKI
ACTORS (PROSECUTOR, GENERAL, VOICE, PALÉOLOGUE, ADJUTANT, MINISTER OF WAR, MINISTER I, II, III) SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK, GRZEGORZ KARŁOWICZ, ŁUKASZ KURCZEWSKI
THE CHORUS OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA
THE ORCHESTRA OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA
Duration: approx. 90 mins
The seats in the auditorium are not numbered.
PLEASE NOTE: The entrance to the Royal Theatre is located on Agrykola street.
The event was included in the calendar of celebrations of the Year of Witold Gombrowicz, announced by the Senate of the Republic of Poland.
