In honor of the 100th anniversary of Polish independence, the Kraków Opera presented the premiere of a new production of Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s only opera, Manru, directed by Laco Adamik.
Written over the course of 8 years, as director Laco Adamik says: “[Manru] is worth getting to know, it is one of the most important Polish opera works of the 20th century and the only Polish opera exhibited at the Metropolitan Opera.” Music director Tomasz Tokarczyk says the opera is “an impressively told story of an unhappy love . . . a story about two different worlds, two separate nations. The world of Gypsies is characterized by freedom, while the world of the Highlanders expresses an extraordinary attachment to the land. The conflict between these worlds comes from intolerance. The subject matter is therefore very current and universal. Paderewski shows this conflict in a particularly impressive musical way.”
Before the premiere performance, the Krakow Opera team participated in the solemn submission of flowers at the IJ Paderewski monument located in Kraków’s Strzelecki Park.
The premiere was realized in cooperation with the NOVA Opera in Bydgoszcz and was co-financed by Poland’s Ministry of Culture.
[Source: opera.krakow.pl]