Catalogue

Bloody crime, family tragedy, the force of destiny… The timeless works of ancient playwrights continue to move audiences also today as well as inspiring present-day artists. Aeschylus’ "Oresteia" has thus become the basis for Agata Zubel’s dramopera to a libretto by Maja Kleczewska.

‘The heart – a void, a gaping wound. / A wound on the left-hand side of the world.’ It is with his heart that Aleksander Nowak seems to have read Radek Rak’s Nike-awarded novel A Tale of a Serpent’s Heart or a Second Word about Jakób Szela. His opera thus abounds in emotions perfectly comprehensible to a sensitive audience – emotions that are nearly obvious, though the author shuns literalness.

Bloody crime, family tragedy, the force of destiny… The timeless works of ancient playwrights continue to move audiences also today as well as inspiring present-day artists. Aeschylus’ "Oresteia" has thus become the basis for Agata Zubel’s dramopera to a libretto by Maja Kleczewska.

‘I made up my mind to go gaga for a few weeks and write some verse loosely based on the bios of my family members,’ explains Michał Rusinek, otherwise a serious and reputable literary scholar, translator, and writer. ‘My ancestors were apparently rather ordinary. Still, I am convinced that even a very ordinary family can be viewed from an unusual perspective.

A vaudeville is a humorous stage piece made up of light-style songs and dances, whose form and content are meant to put the audience in a good mood. The vaudeville composed by Aleksander Nowak, based on Marcin Wicha’s Nike-awarded book Things I Didn’t Throw Out, is no such thing, though. Wicha’s book is a mournful prosaic rhapsody on the prosaic nature of life and on death as its inseparable component. The author bids farewell to his deceased mother through the process of sorting out the stuff that she left behind.

‘Legs are most precious thing. Those touched by the knife of war walk on the shoulders of those who have saved their legs. To go on – is the most important thing, not to stop, not to be locked up,’ runs the text recited by its author, poet and translator Tadeusz Sławek, while Oriental instruments (the oud, daf, and darbuka) are improvising in the background. The Near East’s musical traditions thus knock on the door of the West’s culture, in counterpoint with the soloists, choral parts, and the electronics. Krzysztof Knittel’s Canticum profugorum is an oratorio for soprano (Freszel), baritone (Godlewski), actor, children’s and mixed choirs, oud, percussion, orchestra, and electronic media.