Bridges instead of walls – presenting the programme of the Opera Rara 2020 festival

These works come from different epochs and represent different styles, but are connected by a common thought. They make us wonder why we are so eager to build walls around us, what are the consequences of this, and what to do to build bridges instead of them. Olga Tokarczuk, the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for literature, in an interview given during the Conrad Festival in 2018, spoke about the Palaeolithic settlements built without any fortifications: “Can you imagine that once upon a time people didn’t build walls because there was no need?” In this vision of the distant past, we look at our present, in which the walls – the real and the mental – seem to be growing in number.

What does the opera have to do with it? If we treat it as a fortress separated from the world, in which only the art of beautiful singing is cultivated, probably not much. However, this is a false vision, because opera has always been able to react quickly and sharply – listen to social moods, comment on reality, insult kings, inspire revolts, lead to fury or tame dictators. There is no reason why it shouldn’t tell us about the world here and now. It can do this in two ways – by referring directly to current events or by reflecting them in the mirror of the past.

Hence, this year’s program includes as many as three “historical” operas. “Historical” in the broad sense, because one of them presents a completely fictional history, the second legendary and the third based on facts, but what they all have in common is that they talk about conflicts and the devastating effects of divisions. The first case is Sigismondo” by Rossini, set in the court of the Polish king. However, the work does not portrait one of our rulers of this name, but a fictitious Piast monarch in a country plagued by conflict with Hungary. The 1814 work will be shown in Poland for the first time. Vanda by Dvořák, which presents an episode from the legendary history of Poland, is also poorly known in our country. I don’t think there is a person in our country who doesn’t know the legend of Wanda, who didn’t want to marry a German – and that is what the librettists chose as a starting point. It is an opera about a religious conflict. Queen Wanda is a faithful follower of the Slavic gods and does not agree to accept the proposal of the German duke – and Christianity along with it. War is inevitable. There will also be a work about authentic events and still alive in the collective memory – Weiße Rose. Udo Zimmermann approached the musical elaboration of the history of the German anti-Nazi resistance group White Rose three times. In 1967, he wrote an opera to a libretto by Ingo Zimmermann; he developed another version of the opera the following year. The planned production at the Hamburg Opera in 1986 was to include further adaptations, but instead he decided to write a new work on the same subject, this time to the libretto by Wolfgang Willaschk. The result was a completely different work, devoid of plot and focused on the inner experiences of the two protagonists: the Scholl siblings just before their execution in a Nazi prison.

Unknown, I Live with You is a direct commentary on our present. The opera-installation was inspired by the poems of Afghan women poets – their personal statements, undistorted by their husbands, fathers, brothers and biased media. The authors took part in a project designed to encourage women to express themselves through words and tell their own stories. Most of them took part in the project in secret.

There are other divisions that the Il ballo delle Ingrate (Ballet of the Ungrateful Women) tells us about. This perverse courtly morality play by Monteverdi considers the border between life and death, between people and gods, as well as between men and women. From today’s perspective, it makes us think about whether we, living in the modern times, are not disturbed by the visions of the gender relations presented in the work. The performance at the Opera Rara Festival will break another wall: the one that divides the worlds of contemporary and early music. The bridge between 17th-century Italy and Poland in the 21st century will be built by the composer of the young generation, Teoniki Rożynek.

Alfred Tennyson is a poet rarely read in our country, and who is not as famous as his older Romantic colleagues, such as Shelley, Keats or Coleridge. Meanwhile, in the British Isles, his “Enoch Arden” is considered to be the most classic poem of the Victorian era. Thanks to the festival, we will have the opportunity to discover this story anew – in a performance combining the music of Richard Strauss with the performance of professional and amateur actors. In his poetic novel, the British writer described the story as the reverse of The Odyssey: the fisherman Enoch returns home from a ten-year wandering journey and discovers that his wife, convinced that her husband has been dead for a long time, married another man. The whole project will be directed by Mira Mańka, a student of the Faculty of Drama Directing at the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Krakow, and Dominika Peszko will sit at the piano.

The Opera Rara Festival will run from 23 January to 14 February 2020 in Krakow. Tickets and passes for the festival will be available for sale from 30 October 2019 at InfoKraków points and on the Eventim.pl website.

Are you a novice writer or translator? Do you want to develop your skills and establish international contacts? We look forward to receiving your application by the 3rd of November! The CELA project is launching!

If you are a novice writer or translator, this call for applications is for you! The next edition of the CELA (Connecting Emerging Literary Artists) project – an international talent development programme – is going to launch soon. Thirty writers and eighty translators from ten European countries will have the opportunity to develop their literary skills and promote their work abroad. The Krakow Festival Office is announcing a call for applications for a competition to select three writers and nine translators of less popular languages into Polish in order to establish a Polish team for the upcoming edition of the programme. We are waiting for your applications until 3 November.

What is CELA?

CELA is an international, four-year programme, running in 2019–2023, offering three emerging Polish authors the opportunity to meet artists from other European countries, take part in educational courses, consult their work with mentors and present it to publishers and literary agents at festivals in Poland and abroad.

A text sample submitted by the author as part of this call of applications, as well as all subsequent ones prepared during the courses and residencies, will be translated into eight European languages by translators recruited during the selection process. The texts will be available on the project’s web platform.

The CELA project will also involve nine emerging Polish translators who will translate texts from the native languages of the organisations involved in the project: Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Portuguese, Czech, Slovenian, Romanian and Dutch. The participating translators will also be able to take part in training courses abroad and consult their translations with foreign mentors and experienced Polish translators.

Eleven organisations from ten countries (Belgium, Czechia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia and Spain) are involved in the next edition of the CELA project. An overview of all organisations involved in the project can be found here.

International travels of writers and translators, as well as literary courses and residencies are fully financed thanks to the support of the European Union under the Creative Europe Programme.

Terms and conditions:

We are looking for writers:

• Living in Poland, writing prose in Polish;
• With a good command of English, both spoken and written;
• With at least a few years of writing experience, who have published their first book and/or made their debut in magazines (including on-line);
• With experience in presenting their texts to the public;
• Whose texts have not been translated into more than one of the CELA languages (Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Portuguese, Czech, Slovenian, Romanian and Dutch);
• Currently working on a new prose text;
• Motivated to broaden their horizons and ready to engage in international training courses and residencies during a four-year project.
• Participation in national talent development programmes and creative writing courses will also be welcome.

If you are interested, please send your resume, a one-page cover letter and a fragment of your prose (up to 2000 characters) to oliwia.fryc@biurofestiwalowe.pl The deadline for submitting applications is 3 November.

We are looking for translators:

• Translating from Polish into one of the CELA languages (Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Portuguese, Czech, Slovenian, Romanian and Dutch);
• With a good command of English;
• Graduates of university translation studies/courses;
• Starting their translation career, but with some initial experience, which is confirmed by recently completed jobs and commissions.

If you are interested, please send your resume and a one-page cover letter to oliwia.fryc@biurofestiwalowe.pl The deadline for submitting applications is 3 November.

The results of the 2017-2019 CELA project can be found here.

The Mayor of the City of Krakow Jacek Majchrowski made a decision to establish the PRIMEVAL FOREST in Nowa Huta’s Kujawy neighbourhood in connection with Olga Tokarczuk winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in order to celebrate and commemorate the writer’s achievement by Krakow – UNESCO City of Literature. Join us on 29th October at 10:00 a.m. to plant trees together. The event will be part of the Conrad Festival taking place in Krakow at that time.

“We were delighted to hear the verdict of the Swedish Academy, who awarded Olga Tokarczuk with the Nobel Prize for literature” says Jacek Majchrowski, Mayor of the City of Krakow. “In order to celebrate and commemorate the writer’s success, we decided to plant a forest and name it ‘Primeval’, as a direct reference to one of her books – Primeval and Other Times. The new forest will stay with us forever”, he added.

In the first sentence of the book we read that Primeval is found in the centre of the Universe. As a UNESCO City of Literature, Krakow is the centre of the literary universe, and Olga Tokarczuk has always played a key role in this centre. It is also worth mentioning that the writer considers the ecological crisis and issues of animal rights to be absolutely paramount – she has written about them numerous times, as well as mentioned them many times at meetings with readers all over the world.

The PRIMEVAL FOREST is a joint initiative of the City of Krakow, the Management Board of Green Areas in Krakow and the Krakow Festival Office – operator of the Krakow – UNESCO City of Literature programme. The planting is carried out in connection with the “District Afforestation Programme for the City of Krakow in 2018-2040” run by the Management Board of Green Areas in Krakow. The Kujawy neighbourhood of Nowa Huta will gain 5 hectares new forest, which will house 25,000 seedlings of English oaks, small-leaved limes and beech trees.

The joint planting will take place in plot No 118/2 obr. 40 Nowa Huta. Join us on 29 October 2019 at 10.00 a.m. You can get to the plot from Dymarek Street.

10 October 2019 will go down in the history of Polish literature. Olga Tokarczuk received one of the two Nobel Prizes in Literature awarded today by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Olga Tokarczuk has long been listed among the candidates for the Nobel Foundation prize, alongside writers such as Margaret Atwood, Maryse Condé and Haruki Murakami. Her strong international standing was confirmed by the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft) and her nomination to the finals of the British award in 2019 – this time for Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones). The writer’s popularity was also reflected in her nominations for one of the most important American literary awards, the National Book Award. After being recognised twice by the award jury for her Flights and Drive Your Plow…, Tokarczuk’s prose began to intensely resonate in the collective consciousness of readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Today, on 10 October at 1:00 p.m. at Stockholm’s Börshuset in the Old Town, Olga Tokarczuk received probably the most prestigious prize awarded to writers – the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Polish writer was awarded for her “narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”. The Polish writer won the 2018 Prize.

This is great news for Polish readers, and Krakow has even more reasons to celebrate, said Urszula Chwalba, Head of the Literary Department of the Krakow Festival Office, operator of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature. Olga Tokarczuk has been a friend of the Conrad Festival since its first editions. During each of the meetings with the writer, the festival halls were bursting at the seams. In 2018, she took part in an extraordinary musical project: the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow hosted the premiere of the opera “Ahat ili. Sister of the Gods” with libretto by the writer, based on her novel “Anna In in the Tombs of the World”.

Olga Tokarczuk is a writer, essayist, screenwriter, poet and psychologist. Her most important novels include The Journey of the Book-People (1993), Primeval and Other Times (1996), House of Day, House of Night (1998), Flights (2007), Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (2009) and The Books of Jacob (2014). Her latest release is the collection of Bizarre Stories (2018). She is also a laureate of the Kościelski Award (1997), Paszport Polityki Award (1997) and the Vilenica – Slovenian International Literary Prize (2013). She has been nominated five times for the Nike Literary Award, which she received twice: in 2008 for her novel Flights, and in 2015 for The Books of Jacob. Her House of Day, House of Night was awarded the prestigious Brücke Berlin-Preis Prize (2002). Her books have been translated into many languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Russian, Czech, Ukrainian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi. In 2016, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was adapted into Spoor, with a script by the writer, based on the book, and directed by Agnieszka Holland. The film won the Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017.

This is the fifth Nobel Prize in Literature in the hands of a Polish author. Previous winners included Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905), Władysław Reymont (1924), Czesław Miłosz (1980) and Wisława Szymborska (1996).

The 2019 award went to Peter Handke for his influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.