Opera in Poland
Polish Opera
Information
Related Article: Polish National Opera.
Polish opera may be broadly understood to include operas staged in Poland and works written for foreign stages by Polish composers, as well as opera in the Polish language.
The tradition reaches back to Italian language entertainments of the baroque. Romantic opera in Polish flourished alongside nationalism after the partition and is exemplified by the work of Stanislaw Moniuszko. In the 20th century Polish opera was exported and composers such as Krzystof Penderecki wrote operas in other languages (Ubu Rex, Die Teufel von Loudun) that were translated into Polish later.
Operas were first performed in Poland during the Baroque era in the reign of Sigismund III Vasa (1587-1632). The king himself had no interest in the arts, but his son Władysław IV (reigned 1632-1648) was an enthusiast and patron of opera while he was still a prince. In 1625 Francesca Caccini wrote an opera for Władysław when he visited Italy. This opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina, was also performed in Warsaw in 1628; this is the earliest verified performance of an Italian opera outside of Italy.
A high point of Polish opera occurred during the reign of the last king of Poland, Stanisław August Poniatowski, in spite of the political troubles that afflicted the country. During this time Poland was carved up by its neighbours, Prussia, Austria and Russia, in a series of three Partitions between 1772 and 1795, when the country disappeared off the map of Europe. Yet culture thrived, a National Theatre was opened in 1779, and it was probably during this era that the first operas in Polish were written, although not even the titles and authors of these pieces are known.
Stanisław Moniuszko
Stanisław Moniuszko is regarded as the true creator of Polish national opera. His role in the Polish tradition is similar to that of Glinka in the Russian, Smetana in the Czech and Ferenc Erkel in the Hungarian.
In 1837 Moniuszko returned to Poland after receiving his musical education abroad. Ten years later he wrote the famous Polish Romantic opera Halka. The first, two-act version had its premiere in Vilnius, and a second, four-act version was performed in Warsaw ten years later. The work is regarded as one of the finest Polish national operas. It is made up of musical forms from the Polish folk tradition - polonaises, mazurkas and dumkas - and was the first Polish opera to be "through-composed" (i.e. the entire libretto is set to music and there is no spoken dialogue).
The libretto of Halka, by Włodzimierz Wolski is recognised as one of the finest Polish literary works of its time. Critics have noted certain similarities to Goethe's Faust. Moniuszko's next most important work is Straszny Dwór (The Haunted Manor), more comic in spirit than Halka. It has a libretto by Jan Chęciński which is full of allusions to the Polish noble tradition of Sarmatism and pro-independence sentiments, which led to the opera being banned. The premiere took place in 1865 to great applause, yet the authorities withdrew it after a handful of performances.
Recent Developments
The most recent composers of opera are Krzystof Knittel, Eugeniusz Knapik and Roman Palester. In 1999, Knittel wrote Heart Piece – Double Opera, which makes use of rock music. Knapik composed the operatic trilogy Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas (1990), Silent Screams, Difficult Dreams (1992) and La libertà chiama la libertà (1996). The composer uses English, German and Italian - three traditional operatic languages. Palester wrote Śmierć Don Juana (The Death of Don Juan), a dodecaphonic work to a text by Oscar Milosz, which the composer himself translated from French.