HI§TORY / MICHAŁ DOBRZYŃSKI

Piece commissioned by the Polish Royal Opera

Opera in two acts.
Composition of the libretto: Michał Dobrzyński
Based on the manuscripts (including fragments not yet published) of the play Historia (Operetta) by Witold Gombrowicz

I have a voice. You cannot take away my voice. [...]
May my bare feet accompany
My lips...
I will speak, barefoot...

- This is the first declaration of Vytautas, the main character of the opera, who is the embodiment of the author of the drama. A seventeen-year-old boy - shoeless - confronts his own family and the illusory social ideals represented by its members, and then the creators of the great History. The famous playwright's father, mother and siblings are brought into the action, and their distinctive personality traits and even the melodies of their voices are reflected in the music. In the second act, historical figures enter the stage - including Tsar Nicholas II, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Jozef Pilsudski... The interweaving personal and political threads create a mosaic of meanings, a grotesque tangle of real and imagined events. What was supposed to be a "musical comedy" becomes an image of the longing for non-entanglement, for freedom from "form", from "face", from "dress", from "shoes", from the deceptiveness of the world, from small and big history.

Michał Dobrzyński plays the dual role of composer and librettist. He developed the text of the opera on the basis of the unfinished play Historia by Witold Gombrowicz, including fragments that have never been published before. Copies of the manuscripts were personally provided to the composer by Mrs Rita Gombrowicz. In this way, Michał Dobrzyński returns to the creative thought behind his Operetta, reaching back to the literary pre-sources of the work completed in 2015. "One of the chief tasks of my writing is to break through Unreality to Reality," Gombrowicz once said, and Michał Dobrzyński takes this thought to a new dimension through the universal language of music. The unfinished drama leaves a wide field for musical interpretation - as the composer himself emphasises: "the expressiveness of the thought and the almost vivid legibility of the Gombrowicz characters-symbols used [...] seem to correlate in some special way with the history that is also taking place today and before our eyes".
Marta Dziewanowska-Pachowska

MUSICAL DIRECTION KAROL SZWECH
DIRECTED BY MACIEJ WOJTYSZKO, JAKUB KROFTA
SCENOGRAPHY WOJCIECH STEFANIAK
COSTUMES DOROTA (DOROTHÉE) ROQUEPLO
PREPARATION OF THE VOCAL ENSEMBLE KAROL KNAPIŃSKI
LIGHTING DESIGN PIOTR PAWLIK
PROJECTIONS BY MAREK ZAMOJSKI
ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR KLAUDIA MAZUR
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS AGNIESZKA KOZŁOWSKA, SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK
STAGE MANAGER WANDA KARPINSKA

OBSERVER
WITOLD (COUNTERTENOR) / ALBERT MICHAŁ SŁAWECKI
WITOLD (SOPRANO) IWONA LUBOWICZ
MOTHER / EMPRESS ANETA ŁUKASZEWICZ
FATHER / PROFESSOR / EMPEROR NICOLAS II / EMPEROR WILHELM II / PIŁSUDSKI ROBERT GIERLACH
JANUSZ / RASPUTIN / XIĄŻĘ VON PLESS / WIENIAWA-DŁUGOSZOWSKI ROBERT SZPRĘGIEL
JERZY / XIĄŻĘ VON EULENBURG / ADAŚ MAUERSBERGER WITOLD ŻOŁĄDKIEWICZ
RENA MONIKA LEDZION-PORCZYŃSKA
ALBERTINE / KRYSIA JOANNA FRESZEL
HINDENBURG PIOTR HALICKI
LUDENDORFF SYLVESTER SMULCZYNSKI
ACTORS (PROSECUTOR, GENERAL, VOICE, PALÉOLOGUE, ADJUTANT, MINISTER OF WAR, MINISTER I, II, III) SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK, GRZEGORZ KARŁOWICZ, ŁUKASZ KURCZEWSKI

VOCAL ENSEMBLE OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA
ORCHESTRA OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA
CONDUCTOR KAROL SZWECH