A meeting with directors

“In terms of staging, opera has been clearly heading in the direction of extensive theatrical productions in recent years; hence the idea to invite directors who are proficient in both theatre and opera to the Opera Rara Festival projects. As a critic dealing mainly with theatre, I intend to look at opera with my guests as an important voice in public discourse – an art that consciously operates with a theatrical and musical sign, the aim of which is not only to give aesthetic pleasures but also to express through emotion what cannot be said directly”, promises Tomasz Domagała, who will conduct meetings with the directors invited to the festival

31 January 2020, 9:00 p.m.

Fresh Café, Nadwiślańska 2-4

Meeting with Krystian Lada

Krystian Lada is currently the hottest name in Polish opera. When the programme of the Opera Rara Festival was announced, the name of this director was known only in the theatre and opera circles, but after his romance with Polityka’s Passport, it also became famous among wider audiences. It is no wonder then that the meeting with him is an important event of the festival, especially since the program includes two of his productions: the classic Sigismondo by Gioacchino Rossini and the contemporary Unknown, I Live With You by Katarzyna Głowicka.

The meeting will be hosted by theatre critic Tomasz Domagała, author of the domagalasiekultury.pl blog.

7 February 2020, 9:00 p.m.

BAL, Ślusarska 9

Meeting with Magda Szpecht

Magda Szpecht is one of the most talented young directors in Polish theatre. She is known to audiences for her extremely creative explorations and personal, unobvious theatrical language. Her efforts in dealing with the difficult matter of opera and music will be most interesting. The relationship between the fairly broad creative freedom presented by the director and the somewhat “ossified”, traditional opera form and convention will be one of the main topics of the meeting.

The meeting will be hosted by theatre critic Tomasz Domagała, author of the domagalasiekultury.pl blog.

08 February 2020, 9:00 p.m.

Łaźnia Nowa Theatre, os. Szkolne 25

Meeting with Karolina Sofulak

Karolina Sofulak, an opera director recognised both in Poland and abroad, has undertaken the production of Antonín Dvořák’s opera Vanda. In this work, the most interesting seems to be the combination of the Krakow legend with the Czech personality of the composer. During the meeting, we will try to find out if Poland from a distance – the director herself works mainly in Western Europe – really looks different than from within. We will also talk about whether the picture of our country presented by Dvořák is even a little familiar to the director of his work.

The meeting will be hosted by theatre critic Tomasz Domagała, author of the domagalasiekultury.pl blog.

The Opera Rara Festival will take place in Krakow from 23 January to 14 February 2020. The City of Krakow, Krakow Festival Office and Capella Cracoviensis invite you to the festival.

The figure of the fearless, beautiful and wise ancient ruler of Poland, daughter of Prince Krakus, was depicted for the first time in the Polish Chronicle by Wincenty Kadłubek, who wrote: “She surpassed everyone so far in both beauty and charm, that you would think that nature was not generous but profligate with its gifts and blessings. For even the most prudent and the wisest were astonished with her advice, and the cruellest of the enemies became gentle at her sight.” However, it was the subsequent authors who created a canonical version of her biography, focused around her suicide. After she rejected the German prince’s advances, won the war he had declared and finally received fealty and homage from the defeated Germans, Wanda returned to Krakow to offer herself as a sacrifice to the gods in gratitude for her glorious victory. Her body was consumed by the waves of the Vistula. This is how the story is described in Wielkopolska Chronicle and by Jan Długosz in his Annals, who embellished the legend with many colourful details.

In the opera, the causes of conflict are completely different than those described by chroniclers. Christian authors writing in Latin presented Wanda as an indomitable virgin queen, who swore never to marry and therefore consistently rejected all proposals: “it is more fitting for me to call myself a lady than a lordly wife” (Jan Długosz). Dvořák’s librettists present the story from a completely new perspective. In their version, Wanda never swore to keep herself pure. Her decisions stem from a religious conflict, for she is a faithful follower of the Slavic gods, and being the wife of a German ruler would be tantamount to accepting Christianity, and both her and her people were hardly in favour of the new faith. This approach to the subject is not surprising – the opera was written at a time when pan-Slavic ideas had been circulating in the Czech Republic for a long time, competitive neo-Slavicism would emerge shortly afterwards, and Slavicism began to enjoy great popularity in the wake of general anti-Germanic and patriotic sentiments.

The opera speaks of very painful matters, which still remain current in many corners of the world. Religious wars, religious persecution, conversion by force – all this is always marked by terrible cruelty, furious blindness and crazy fanaticism. Even though this has been happening for thousands of years, the question remains unanswered as to why religion, which should direct our minds towards the spiritual world, eternity and transcendence, is able to awaken our primordial instincts and build the most durable walls between people.

From a contemporary perspective, the message of some of themes presented in Vanda seems very questionable. Sure, we might have a protagonist of flesh and bone, a true woman of action, but the question remains about the sense of her sacrifice, which pretty much questions her military success. In the chronicles, her suicide was a thanksgiving for the victory – something that seemed controversial to Długosz – while in the opera, it is the result of a transaction: Wanda promises her life to the gods before the battle in exchange for victory. This removes the theme of her agency, instead we go back to the motif known from many 19th-century operas, prevalent in particular in Wagner’s works, where the corpse of a self-sacrificing woman was the most effective guarantee of restoring order in the world. This time, it will be the director Karolina Sofulak, winner of the European Opera Directing Competition, who will decide on its stage interpretation. She is already well-known in Poland for producing Gounod’s famous Faust at the Grand Theatre in Poznań; however, she works mainly abroad, among others at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Opera Holland Park and Opéra National de Bordeaux. The difficult late-Romantic score will be tackled by Sinfonietta Cracovia led by Jurek Dybał.

Sometimes a trivial thing is enough for them to ruin the country they are supposed to rule. They divide people, building walls of hostility between them. They destroy their enemies with libel and slander, disregarding the fact that their private vendetta brings doom to whole nations. Interestingly enough, these methods have hardly changed throughout history. These days, we even coined new names for them: “post-truth” was named the 2016 word of the year by the editors of the Oxford Dictionary, “fake news” won a similar distinction a year later, awarded by the creators of Collins English Dictionary. This can bring no good to the general public. All of these truths were embedded by librettist Giuseppe Maria Foppa in his story of the gullible and jealous King Sigismondo, his unscrupulous minister Ladislao, the vengeful King Ulderico of Hungary, the honest Zenovito and Queen Aldimira, the victim of this world of male conflict.

Librettos of Italian operas of the early 19th century do not enjoy a particularly good reputation. Complexity, improbability, conventionality, one-dimensional nature – these sins weigh irrevocably on these old works. Some theatre artists even keep far away from them, believing that apart from their dubious sensationalism and ostentatious melodramatism they have nothing else to offer. The list of accusations often includes a rather liberal approach to history. This happened because after mythological gods and heroes definitely went out of fashion, the focus turned towards authentic heroes and stories referring to “history.” In many cases, you can guess the identity of the protagonists only by their names, because their fates presented by the operas of that time have little to do with their actual lives. One of the most favourite figures of that era was the Queen Elizabeth I of England – Rossini’s and Donizetti’s operas presented numerous fantastic adventures and misfortunes of hers, which were completely unknown even to her biographers.

Foppa went even further. The name of the eponymous protagonist – “Sigismondo” simply means Sigismund in Italian, and the libretto suggests that the opera is about a Polish king. From history lessons, some will probably remember that we had three rulers by that name: First, Sigismund the Old, then Sigismund II Augustus, followed by Sigismund III Vasa. However, after a cursory reading it turns out that Foppa’s romantic libretto does… not cover any of them. Instead, he created a previously unknown king Sigismund of Piast dynasty, who ruled in the country, which had its capital in Gniezno. The idea itself can be simply something to laugh about – just like the Czech coast, to which a ship arrives in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. But… Why do we demand that the contemporaneous authors of an old opera or theatre play stick to facts? Why should they be more diligent than authors who create whole alternative worlds in the imaginary past, or scriptwriters of costume TV series, who often approach history in a similarly liberal manner?

When we stop mocking the alleged naivete of the librettists of old, we may discover a certain depth – not alike Shakespeare’s works, but the story is presented in a skilful manner, and the authors show us history as a game, the outcome of which often depends on individual ambitions, passions and resentments. Rossini’s opera has a moral derived from the tradition of the Enlightenment, which was already outdated at that time. Its optimism would soon disappear from the world of the Italian opera seria, but Sigismondo still offers us a finale with inspirational belief that it is possible to link what seemed to be definitively broken, and that the walls that grew between the characters can be broken down to dust.

The opera, which premiered in 1814 in Venice, will be shown in Poland for the first time. It is directed by Krystian Lada – winner of the prestigious MORTIER Next Generation Award, granted once every two years to a young artist who has already proven their great, promising talent talent at the outset of their career. Capella Cracoviensis will be led by Jan Tomasz Adamus, and the cast will feature a number of excellent performers, led by Argentinian counter-tenor Franco Fagioli.

Two cooperating worlds, of cinema and literature, has recently met in Kraków. The industry event called Word2Picture, which aims at networking between producers and publishers and presenting book novelties with the potential for film adaptation, took place on 25 and 26 October 2019 as part of the Conrad Festival. Although we will have to wait another year for the second edition of the event, the organisers are already announcing another workshop, conducted in cooperation with HBO Polska, educating publishers on how to encourage the film industry to adapt books from their catalogue.

The October event was attended by several dozen producers, screenwriters and directors from several TV stations and labels, including HBO, TVN, Film Produkcja or Akson Studio, as well as key Polish publishers – Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy “Znak”, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Czarne, W.A.B., Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Powergraph and literary agents. Agnieszka Holland, who talked about the cooperation with the Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk on the screening of her novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, was a special guest of the event.

The producers got acquainted with the specifics of the Polish book market during the panel Book market review for film producers led by Ewa Bolińska-Gostkowska. At the pitching session moderated by Alicja Grawon-Jaksik – expert in business and legal issues in the film sector, as well as president of the National Chamber of Audiovisual Producers – 12 book projects selected as part of an earlier open call were presented. The session was followed by subsequent one-to-one meetings with producers.

The pitching session was preceded by workshops for publishers, which took place on 23 September. During the training conducted by Alicja Grawon-Jaksik, participants talked about which books are particularly sought by producers considering a feature-length or series adaptation, how the film market works and who are the major players. The workshop also included a legal module dedicated to the issue of film contracts, led by advocate Krzysztof Czyżewski, as well as training on the art of pitching itself.

Word2Picture is a bow towards screenwriters, including beginners. This year, the programme included a screenplay masterclass on the basics of film adaptation led by Agnieszka Kruk, screenwriter and founder of StoryLab.pro, as well as a discussion about the most famous Polish adaptation of recent years, i.e. Blinded by the Lights. The meeting What makes the book be movielike? led by Ewa Bolińska-Gostkowska was honoured by the participation of Izabela Łopuch, producer of HBO, and Jakub Żulczyk, who played the double role of author and screenwriter. The hall of the Pauza club in Kraków was bursting at the seams!

The goal of Word2Picture was – and will continue to be – to create a space for cooperation between publishers and film or series producers, to present new productions as well as film and publishing trends, and above all – to gather in one place artists who can lead to the creation of Polish and international productions based on excellent books by Polish authors. See you next year!

This year’s Word2Picture industry meeting was part of the Book Industries section of the 11th Conrad Festival in Kraków.