"The Abduction from the Seraglio" had a slight national subtext from the start. According to the will of Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg, a great advocate of the singspiel as a national form of artistic expression (a kind of opposition to Italian opera buffa), the work was to be performed in German. And, as so often happens, after several years of unsuccessful endeavours founded on the selection of bad Kapellmeister, the Emperor himself decided to ask Mozart and the poet Gottlieb Stephanie to create a work that would fit in with his idea of developing a German response to the ubiquitous Italian opera buffa. Nor does the work remain thematically deaf to the prevailing fashion of the time for anything oriental that was associated with the Ottoman Empire. The stalls of Vienna and Berlin at the time were full of colourful fabrics, spices and nuts, and anything associated with a distant land, in addition to being surrounded by the religious and cultural differences of that land, built curiosity.

Director: Michal Znaniecki

Cast: Joanna Moskowicz, Aleksander Kunach, Katarzyna Drelich, Sebastian Marszałowicz.

Author: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Release date: 2023-06-01
Genre: opera
Set design: Paweł Dobrzycki
Music: Marcin Sompoliński
Light: Paweł Dobrzycki
Choreography: Inga Pilchowska
Costumes: Paweł Dobrzycki