Mieczysław Weinberg's "Passenger" at the Bregenzer Festspiele, photo: Karl Forster
The season at the Grand Theatre - Polish National Opera opens with a relatively unknown 20th Century masterpiece. Mieczysław Weinberg's The Passenger premieres on October 8 as one of the most important operatic discoveries of the 20th Century. The season will come to a close with Karol Szymanowski's King Roger, a work that will also inaugurate the Polish presidency in the European Union
The two main operas opening and closing the Autumn 2010 theatre season invoke the tragic history of Europe in the 20th century, from its disintegration in the wake of World War I to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Szymanowski's ambition was to restore a mythical dimension to opera, while Weinberg's creative imagination tried to protect human freedom from the "Black Wall" of Auschwitz. Both works testify to the power of an artist's talent in the face of the destructive processes of history.
The Polish National Opera's new programme in a novel European constellation, the effect of collaborations with leading theatres around Europe: the English National Opera in London, Teatro Real in Madrid, Bregenz Festival, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Teatro Comunale in Bologna, and Gran Theatre del Liceu in Barcelona. This season, Teatr Wielki invited many prominent creators and performers, from David Pountney, Keith Warner, Sasha Waltz, Valery Gergiev, to the brilliant Renée Fleming. It is also our ambition to achieve a balance between avant-garde and a contemporary look at tradition; all that is interesting in European opera today seems to originate from this sphere of tension.
The season's sensation in every aspect is Mieczysław Weinberg's The Passenger. This is its second European production, after the world premiere of the concert version in Moscow in 2006. Directed by David Pountney, this operatic adaptation of the novel by Zofia Posmycz was first presented at this year's Bregenz Festival.
"This opera is unappreciated", wrote Michał Bristiger in his in-depth and insightful study on Weinberg and "The Passenger". "Zofia Posmysz's novel, Andrzej Munk's film, and Mieczysław Weinberg's opera are at the crossroads of contemporary culture. This is where important matters will be resolved. With a question, I now return to the beginning: why did the passenger keep quiet when it was so long after the war? The opera under discussion is stunning. For opera audiences who will go to see "Passenger", I have a phrase from Robert Musil: 'A good life depends on whether someone can keep up with art'."
Giacomo Puccini's Turandot staged by Mariusz Treliński and Boris Kudlička brings to mind Treliński's brilliant debut, Madame Butterfly. The show is co-produced with the Teatro Comunale in Bologna. Thanks to Puccini and the legendary premiere at La Scala conducted by Arturo Toscanini, Turandot, the story of a Chinese princess told for the first time by Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights and then discovered by Carlo Gozzi's 18th-century Venice, has grown to be an icon of European opera.
Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro directed by Keith Warner is yet another reminder of the triumphant, virtuoso intelligence of both Mozart and his opera's title character, which unexpectedly struck at the seemingly stable order of the ancien regime. Who knows if today's world order, undermined by so many crises, couldn't do with such a duo once again?
Toshio Hosokawa's Matsukaze directed and choreographed by Sasha Waltz is a co-production with an extremely important European theatre, namely Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. This is one of the most interesting examples of Japanese Noh theatre being blended with European avant-garde music. Sasha Waltz's choreography exudes innovative dynamism and contemporary visual energy.
The Trojans by Hector Berlioz directed by Carlus Padrissa, head of the brilliant Catalonian group La Fura dels Baus, and musically supervised by Valery Gergiev, a star of the Mariinsky Theatre, is yet another premiere of this season. Today's theatres around Europe and the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw are coming closer to fulfilling Sergei Diaghilev's pioneering dream of truly European ballet and theatre, of innovative links between tradition and avant-garde, of international cooperation among artists and an international European audience. As a tribute to Diaghilev - the centenary of whose "Paris seasons" Europe celebrated in 2009 - there will be a ballet evening with three versions of The Rite of Spring, choreographed by Vatslav Nijinsky, Emanuel Gat, and Maurice Béjart. The Polish National Ballet will also present Sergei Prokofiev's classical ballet Cinderella with the traditional choreography of Frederick Ashton.
The season ends with Karol Szymanowski's King Roger directed by David Pountney, who also produced Weinberg's The Passenger. In recent years, Szymanowski has finally found his place in the pantheon of the 20th century's most important composers. In the aftermath of the European catastrophe that was World War I, when he was working with the young Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz on the Sicilian story of King Roger, his intuition led him to a moment of crystallization of the European myth of Sicily and its historical multicultural character, also present in art, in which he saw a chance to save the European spirit. King Roger opens Poland's presidency in the European Union. It would be hard to find a more fitting sign and emblem for the challenges faced by the European Union and Poland today.
Apart from the premiering shows, the Grand Theatre has also programmed some of its most successful shows from the previous years. These include Leoš Janáček's "Katia Kabanova" (first performance: September 16), Richard Strauss's "Elektra", Philip Glass's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly - the early work of the duo Trliński/Kudlička from 1999, one of the most successful production in the history of the Teatr Wielki - National Opera.
Teatr Wielki - National Opera
pl. Teatralny 1, 00-950 Warsaw
Director: Waldemar Dąbrowski
Artistic Director: Mariusz Treliński
tel. (+48 22) 692 02 00
fax (+48 22) 826 04 23
www.teatrwielki.pl
For the complete repertoire, see: teatrwielki.pl
Source: www.teatrwielki.pl