Time 19:00
The Royal Theatre in the Old Orangery in the Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw
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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Based on the manuscripts (including previously unpublished fragments) of the play Historia (Operetta) by Witold Gombrowicz.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 can’t 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. A seventeen-year-old boy – shoeless – stands against both his own family and the hollow social ideals they embody, as well as the architects of great History. 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, developing the text of the opera based on the unfinished drama Historia by Witold Gombrowicz and the writer’s previously unpublished manuscripts. The composer revisits the creative concept behind his Operetta, drawing once again 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.
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 / OLGA PASIECZNIK
MOTHER / EMPRESS ANETA ŁUKASZEWICZ / MAŁGORZATA PAŃKO-EDERY
FATHER / PROFESSOR / EMPEROR NICHOLAS II / EMPEROR WILHELM II / PIŁSUDSKI ROBERT GIERLACH / PAWEŁ MICHALCZUK
JANUSZ / RASPUTIN / PRINCE VON PLESS / WIENIAWA DŁUGOSZOWSKI ŁUKASZ HAJDUCZENIA / ROBERT SZPRĘGIEL
JERZY / PRINCE VON EULENBURG / ADAŚ MAUERSBERGER WITOLD ŻOŁĄDKIEWICZ
RENA DOROTA LACHOWICZ / 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.
