The Miłosz Festival entitled ”The Usurpers”!

The coming 8th Miłosz Festival will host the most outstanding poets from around the world and, as always, will accurately refer with its title to the work of its eminent patron. Between June 6 and 9 Krakow will again become the centre of what is considered new and exciting in contemporary poetry.

„The Usurpers” is the title of the first novel by Czesław Miłosz, and, at the same time, the motto of this year’s edition of the Festival. Authors‘ meetings, panel debates, educational workshops nd concerts – a total of several dozen events that make up the rich program of the  Festival. „The Usurpers” – a novel unmasking the mechanisms of Stalinist power – is a universal work that goes far beyond the historical context of the era. It tells us about gaining symbolic power – about imposing the way of thinking about reality and the language with which we interpret the phenomena occurring in it.

Our present day, especially in the global dimension, seems to be a game of narrative and a scuffle in which various stories simplifying the depth of experiencing the world compete to gain the power over the imagination of an individual. They also create censorship and self-censorship pressure, the coupling of which can be observed in the language we speak of the world – as Krzysztof Siwczyk, Artistic Director of the Festival, announces. In the 8th edition of the Miłosz Festival we shall look closer at these stories: together with the guests from Poland and from all over the world we shall interpret and critically dismantle them. The social organism is a cauldron full of aggression driven by fake news, propaganda language and simplifying brevity of the social media message. The excess of information, from which nothing is cohesive or common to all of us, is gradually becoming the centre of power. Between June 6 and 9 poetry will have its say – as one of the few bastions of resistance to banality and chaos.

Culture should not only organise general imagination; it is also supposed to be democratic and hospitable, and these requirements are directly reflected in this year’s program of the Miłosz Festival. For four days of June Krakow will turn into a poetic haven for outstanding artists from various linguistic and cultural areas. They will come to share their experiences gained in places where the fate of our common Europe is being determined, where there is censorship depriving people of their freedom, where violence rules or an armed conflict is in progress. Simon Armitage (Great Britain), Tatev Chakhian (Armenia), Saleh Diab (Syria), Ferida Duraković (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Elena Fanailova (Russia), Athena Farrokhzad (Sweden), Tomas Venclova (Lithuania), Denise Riley (Great Britain) – they are some of those the Krakow audience will meet. For those who are seeking experiment, performance and the voice of a younger generation in poetry, the organisers have prepared, as every year, the OFF edition – this year focused on the issues of revolution, violence and artistic ways of buidling resistance.

Among the guests from Poland we will see, e.g.: laureate of Wisława Szymborska Award, at the same time a translator of American poetry, Krystyna Dąbrowska; Piotr Florczyk, poet, essayist, laureate of prestigious American awards for translations of poems by Anna Świrszczyńska; Magdalena Kicińska, who made her debut with a poetry book „Środki transportu”, although very well-known to the readers as the author of the famous „Pani Stefa”; Maciej Melecki, poet co-founder of the Mikołowski Institute, co-writer of the film „Wojaczek”; Antoni Pawlak, publicist, author of 20 poetry books, a long-standing spokesman for the Mayor of Gdańsk; Uta Przyboś, poet and painter, laureate of Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award, and at the same time a daughter of one of the most outstanding Polish poets of the 20th century, Julian Przyboś; Alicja Rosé, poet and illustrator and Tomasz Różycki, poet, essayist, laureate of the Kościelski Prize.

Power comes and goes, but what is good at the Miłosz Festival remains unchanged. We proudly present  new volumes of the works of our foreign guests translated into Polish, which will be prepared especially for the Festival. This time the organisers have invited the following publishing houses: Wydawnictwo Pogranicze, Wydawnictwo Lokator, Instytut Mikołowski, Dom Literatury w Łodzi, Wydawnictwo J and Wydawnictwo a5. Once again, during the Festival, the Wisława Szymborska Award will be presented for the author of the best poetry book in the preceding year.

Let us give in to the power of poetry and together, let us make the Festival a truly hospitable home, a forum for the dialogue of many languages and views of the world – already at the second weekend of June. Miłosz Festival rules!

The organisers of the Festival are: The City of Krakow, the Krakow Festival Office and the City of Literature Foundation.

Today in Krakow, the results of the architectural and urban planning competition for the design of the Planet Lem Literature and Language Centre were announced. The city’s flagship investment in the field of culture will be located on the site of the former Salt Store in Zabłocie by 2023. The international two-stage architectural competition was organised by the City of Krakow, the Krakow Festival Office – the operator of the centre – and the Association of Polish Architects, Krakow Branch.

Between tradition and modernity

The Festival was inaugurated by the premiere of Hippolyte et Aricie – Jean-Philippe Rameau’s lyrical tragedy directed by Sjaron Minailo. A great challenge of the French Baroque turned out to be a field for experimentation for a contemporary artist. The Israeli director created the spectacle with elegance worthy of France, all while maintaining a balance between music, libretto and movement, thus proving that it is possible to build a bridge between the past and tradition spanning centuries with contemporary interpretation. Non nova, sed novae – the old has been read anew. A similar experiment was conducted by Tomasz Cyz, who presented a coherent artistic statement by combining two musical works, with completely divergent histories, aesthetics, genre and form. His two-part, reflexive staging of Cassandra & Just consisted of Baroque solo cantata by Benedetto Marcelli (1727) and post-minimalistic film music by David Lang (2014). A Madrigal Opera by Philip Glass is another one of experimental works, which is constantly being reinterpreted and read anew. Thanks to Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s metaphorical and artistic interpretation, the original opera returned to Krakow (the performance was commissioned by the Opera Rara Festival in 2017), focusing once again on the openness and ambiguity of the composer’s and director’s message.

After the creative search at the intersection of the experiment, abstract art and metaphor, there was time for some entertainment, masquerade and humour – Mozart’s Così fan tutte, cast and directed by Cezary Tomaszewski, was a carnival holiday and controlled prank. The sisters were played by the perfect Katarzyna Oleś-Blacha (Fiordiligi) and the charming Monika Korybalska-Kozarek (Dorabella), Marzena Lubaszka was cast as their clever and playful maid Despina, Sebastian Szumski and Przemysław Borys created a successful duo of young officers – Guglielmo and Ferrando, and Jacek Ozimkowski entertained the audience as Don Alfonso. The artists and the director provided the audience with excellent entertainment, and the music, masterfully played by the musicians of Cappella Cracoviensis under the baton of Jan Tomasz Adamus, left them in awe. Inviting the Krakow Burgher Choir, made up of amateur singers and music aficionados, turned out to be a perfect move, since they gave a great performance.

Towards singing

Chamber meetings with highest-quality singing were possible thanks to renowned artists, performing on the most important music stages in the world: Jakub Józef Orliński, Evelina Dobračeva, Sophie Karthäuser, Adriana Kučerová and Patricia Petibon. Each of the five recitals presented a variety of voices and temperaments of the performers, while demonstrating the diversity of the repertoire over the centuries and cultures.

The young and charismatic countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński enthralled listeners with the joy and lightness of is singing, as well as with his bold juxtaposition of two distant musical worlds – 17th-century operatic arias and Polish songs of the 20th and 21st centuries. Not only did he reveal many colours and undertones of Baroque music, but he also proved himself extremely successful in contemporary repertoire, particularly with his masterful performance of songs by Szymanowski, Baird and Łukaszewski. Russian soprano Evelina Dobračeva reassured the audience that lyricism can be expressed to its fullest mostly through singing, by performing songs of the three great composers – Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Sergei Rachmaninov. Sophie Karthäuser impressed with her rich musical imagination and artistic maturity, which are both required to perform a musically difficult and interpretative programme comprising German Lieder and French songs. Adriana Kučerova’s recital let the Krakow audience listen to Slovak folk songs, and the artist enchanted her listeners with her beautiful voice and expressive stage personality. The festival and a series of recitals were crowned by the performance of the unconventional French soprano Patricia Petibon. Together with La Cetra Barockorchester ensemble, the singer has brought about an extraordinary world with no stylistic, sound, historical or even geographical boundaries. Seemingly musically distant arias from French Baroque operas and traditional melodies from different parts of the world all came together to form this colourful panorama of sounds.

***

Opera Rara is not a review of performances, but a committed and creative forum on the current state of the opera. This year’s edition of the festival proved that this genre constantly remains inspiring and fashionable, allowing us to draw on its rich and extensive tradition, experiment, rediscover old works, keep creating new ones, evoke emotions and have fun. The diverse programme of this year’s edition of the festival certainly provided the audience with a wide range of impressions and emotions. Did it find new roads? Following the paths of various interpretations and ideas, it marked out its own path – somewhere between experimentation and  tradition, between modernity and history. Was it a golden mean?

Baroque arias and old songs from distant lands

The artist picked up a bold selection of arias from French Baroque opera, English masque and Spanish zarzuela, which comprised the main part of the concert programme, juxtaposing them with traditional songs from Peru, France and the British Isles. In addition to the classic “Greensleves” tune, we had the opportunity to hear compositions by Jean Philippe Rameau, Henry Purcell, Marc-Antoin Charpentier and George Frideric Handel. The juxtaposition of solemn arias with Peruvian melodies and free Spanish zarzuela performed by Petibon and La Cetra Barockorchester, was surprising at first, but turned out to be a cohesive, colourful and very lively programme, and the seemingly distant musical and stylistic words all joined together into a colourful panorama. The performers, who enjoyed both the music they played, as well as the fact that they were playing together, captivated and delighted the audience with their imagination and stage energy.

The colourful sounds of the musical New World – Nouveau Monde – filled the Cloth Hall thanks to the variety of interesting instruments, including bagpipes, theorbo, harpsichord and strings, and their sound was complemented by Petibon’s dynamic, dramatic soprano. The programme of the concert featured vocal pieces interwoven with instrumental fragments performed by La Cetra Barockorchester with certain style and expression. Together with the ensemble, the singer has brought about an extraordinary world with no stylistic, sound, historical or even geographical boundaries.

Elemental power on stage

Petibon’s performance was truly unconventional – the artist wore colourful glasses, the musicians put on masks and feathered wings, and used plush mascots of a fox and a hare to illustrate the melody of “J’ai vu le loup, le renard, le lièvre.” Other enjoyable elements included songs imitating the sounds of animals and birds from exotic countries far beyond. Spontaneous and cavalier, Petibon emphasised the performed pieces with balanced dance and gestures; while combining jokes, great entertainment and certain panache with daring singing. Petibon knows how to use her voice to produce all the tones and shades in order to give her melodies a certain glow and meaning, depending on their lyrics and the context of the work. The singer also surprised the audience with her even, strong voice in low registers, quite unusual for a coloratura soprano.

Patricia Petibon is an extremely expressive, charismatic artist who is outstanding at dealing with the audience. Her Krakow performance was a clear example showing that one can build a bridge between traditional music from different countries, as well as high art, all while having fun – especially when the energy and joy of the performing musicians is shared with the audience they enthral and enchant together.

It was a perfect and strong finale of this year’s edition of the festival – filled with beautiful songs, joyful carnival entertainment and artistic impressions.

Slavic sentimentalism

The recital programme alternated between joyful and humorous songs, such as Z jednej strony Moravy Suchonia, which was repeated for an encore, as well as lyrically sentimental ones, including Dobrú noc, má milá – a song opening Dvořák’s V národním tónu. Adriana Kučerová has been familiar with folk repertoire from a very early age – she grew up in a region where folklore is still alive and where she heard these songs in their authentic arrangements and performances. This in-depth knowledge of the Slovak musical tradition turned out to be vastly beneficial to the soprano, who offered us the best interpretation of the works she performed, characterised by her lightness and sensitivity.

The artist perfectly captured the mood of each of the songs, moving the audience with her tender melodies, later cheering them up with perverse or dancing songs. She enchanted the listeners not only with her clear, resonant voice, but also with her energy on stage and her beautiful smile. The natural singing, modulation of the tone of the nostalgic phrases of melodies and the artist’s attention to dynamic nuances helped create a proper atmosphere and strengthen the audience’s belief in the authenticity of the emotions expressed by the songs.

One of the most interesting elements of the performance was a series of five Slovak songs entitled Dedinské scény by Béla Bartók, presenting the theme of marriage. This great Hungarian composer, was linked with Slovakia by his life and work – he studied in Bratislava, his mother came from Martin, he devoted his life to the study of folklore – which became an inspiration for this composition.

“I hate music, but I like to sing”

Kučerová also proved to be an excellent actress. Her dramatic talent was highlighted not only by the interpretation of each of the songs of the first part of the recital, but also by a series of funny, perverse children’s songs by Leonard Bernstein (I Hate Music! A Cycle of Five Kid Songs), which present a monologue of a ten-year-old girl tired of constant musical rehearsals. For the finale of the recital, the soprano surprised the audience with a contemporary musical puzzle piece by Evgeny Irshai, Menuet na ostravé, with sound effects, whispering syllables and clapping. With these performances, the soprano successfully captivated the audience in the second part of her performance.

The artist enthralled the Krakow concert-goers with her singing, but also with her artistic and stage personality. The interesting programme of the concert presented the mostly unknown repertoire of our neighbours, and the joy and cheerfulness, which the artist was teeming with during her performance, had a lasting impact on the audience. The soprano was accompanied by pianist Róbert Pechanec.

***

Adriana Kučerová, an opera star in her native Slovakia, has performed on the stages of La Scala, Vienna Opera, Berlin Opera, Bavarian Opera and Paris Opera, she is also known to the audience of festivals in Glyndebourne, Salzburg and Ravenna. She has performed under the batons of many renowned conductors, including Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Gustav Dudamel and Vladimir Jurowski. The soprano’s success is hardly a surprise – her stage personality and singing talent make her performances, as well as her solo recitals, a great pleasure – and undeniably a great artistic experience.

For the Krakow Festival Office – Agnieszka Lakner, musicologist

Highest-quality poetry

For her recital in Krakow, the artist selected songs dating back to the 19th and 20th century tradition of leading musical styles – German Lied and French mélodie, which were composed to the best poems of their times. Performing songs to the poems by wordsmiths such as Lenau, Eichendorff, Heine, Goethe, Hugo, Verlaine and Baudelaire require the performer to be artistically mature. With her rich musical and lyrical imagination, Sophie Karthäuser has taken great care of the credibility of her interpretation.

The first part of the concert featured songs from the German cultural circles, created by Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny, whose music has been brought up and rediscovered in recent years, as well as Clara Schumann. Karthäuser impressed the audiences with her sublime lyricism and reliable technique, which enabled her to focus on the nuances contained in the lyrics and notes. She also enthralled the audience with the power of her full, strong voice, characterised by the wealth of its timbre, attention to precision of phrasing and balanced contrast of her narrative.

A sublime creation

Karthäuser was equally outstanding in both German and French repertoire, naturally moving from the dynamic expression in the first part of the concert, to the sophisticated impressionistic and symbolic character of Claude Debussy’s songs. The selection of songs included in the series entitled Un petit bestiaire (included on Le Bal des animaux, an album released by the artist in November last year) also turned out to be just brilliant. Un petit bestiaire featured songs by Gabriel Fauré, Emmanuel Chabrier, Reynald Hahn, Maurice Ravel and Edouard Lalo, which portrayed a selection of birds (ducks, nightingales, peacocks, larks) and a butterfly – this exception was thanks to Gabriel Fauré’s piece. Given this diverse accompaniment, the soprano went for a slightly playful tone and frequent fiorituras in the form of ornaments, trills and vibratos (characteristic of her singing), which effectively enriched the melody and added elegance to the recital.

The atmosphere of the performance was ensured by pianist Eugene Asti, with whom Sophie Karthäuser collaborated during the recording of Le Bal des animaux and earlier albums with music by Francis Poulenc. Asti’s accompaniment was stylish, very agile and brilliant – in the case of songs of Un petit bestiaire, and very dynamic and expressive in German repertoire presented during the recital. The duo of Sophie Karthäuser and Eugene Asti brought about a particular atmosphere of romanticism, symbolism and impressionism.

It was the third master recital of the Opera Rara Festival, which presented a varied temperament of the performers and a wide historical and cultural spectrum of repertoire.

For the Krakow Festival Office – Agnieszka Lakner, musicologist

Lyrical confessions

The programme of her recital included songs by three great Russian composers: Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Sergei Rachmaninov. In total, it featured nineteen romances, lullabies and serenades presenting the different shades and states of love – infatuation, fulfilment, anticipation, longing, and torment. The repertoire, which the artist learned by heart, comprised a diverse anthology of Russian songs of the 19th and 20th centuries. With subtle gestures and facial expressions, Dobračeva painted all the colours of love with her dark, deep voice. The singer interpreted the lyrics of all the songs very carefully – not only did she sing lyrical confessions using the language of musical feelings, but also illustrated the mood and landscape painted between the verses. In Rimsky-Korsakov’s Не ветер, вея с высоты (Not the Wind, Blowing from the Heights), she masterfully unleashed her voice into a balanced crescendo, reminiscent of gusts of wind; in Rachmaninov’s Сирень (Lilac), she painted the picture of a sunrise and dawn with a subtly quieter voice. The artist impressed the audience with the power of her voice and precise control over it. Evelina Dobračeva’s singing perfectly combined poetry with music

More than songs

However, the attention of the audience was not only focused on the artist. The accompaniment of each song was an example of the excellent Russian school of piano, which was exemplified by Semion Skigin, a renowned pianist who accompanied Evelina Dobračeva that evening. The piano parts in each of the performed songs constituted instrumental miniatures, with some masterful fragments and inclusions, which built the mood of the concert. Skigin perfectly painted the broad spectrum of tones, emotions and colours contained in the musical score, with his characteristic sensitivity. He created a successful duo with Dobračevá – no wonder, since both are intimately familiar with Russian repertoire. However, the recital would not sound so nostalgic and elegant if it was not for the natural understanding of Russian temperament and intonation of the native language. Works from the salons of St. Petersburg and Moscow sounded great in the Hall of Collegium Novum of the Jagiellonian University, whose interiors created a perfect ambience for the concert.

***

As an encore, the soprano performed two arias: from Tchaikovsky’s Jolanta and “O mio babbino caro” – a famous aria composed by Giacomo Puccini for Gianni Schicchi, amazing the audience and ending the evening on a sentimental note, touching the most sensitive strings in the soul and heart. After all, this is all what poets, musicians, and all the romantics cared about, and this was definitely one of such evenings, filled with poetry and lyricism.

Limitations won’t limit the intensity of sound

This chamber opera, composed by Philip Glass in 1980, is not at all reminiscent of his two earlier famous stage works: Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, with delightfully defined characters and a documentary plot. A madrigal opera, on the other hand, is not an opera in a traditional sense of this word – there is no narrative, no characters, no libretto, no arias, and no recitatives. In reality, this piece is an example of abstract and demanding musical theatre, forcing the director to create events on stage, that will remain consistent with music, forcing the performers to be precise and to deal with the text limited only to abstract syllables, asking the listeners to focus and persevere in tension.

Glass’ music is not easy to play. Repetitions with slight metro-rhythmic shifts, sharp chords, fast arpeggios and vocals based on syllables give it an abstract and ascetic, yet intense nature, which keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. The score of A madrigal opera offers no time for rest for performers and listeners alike. Over the modest instrumental cast of the violin and viola duo (Radosław Pujanek and Aneta Dumanowska), the audience can listen to the polyphonic vocal parts performed by a six-person ensemble (soprano Antonina Ruda, altos Joanna Kurek and Justyna Ołów, tenor Krzysztof Mroziński and basses Michał Dembiński and Marek Opaska) – according to the composer’s intent to imitate the 16th-century Italian polyphonic madrigals. The ensemble of performers met the difficult challenge posed by Glass, drawing attention to themselves with a style loosely referring to the 16th century – pinned-up hair, strong eye make-up and costumes reminiscent of Baroque collars.

Trance and loops

The repetitive nature of the work gives the impression of a trance, as well as looping structures and musical moments. The same idea was used for designing choreography for actors/dancers, who presented the process of the birth and evolution of human beings. In the first act, we see the emergence of beings from enormous covers, hatching out like chicks out of eggs. They come out of bags and hide in them again, flex their muscles, wriggle on the floor, initiate interactions among each other. The repetitiveness of movements and slow acting evolves along with the narrative and develops in a certain dance, creating a coherent, group choreography. Garbaczewski chose dance as a medium to tell the story of birth and beginning, which seems to be a logical consequence of the composer’s inspiration with the work of choreographers and the process of subjugating the music to drama. The narrative of the performance, made up of metaphors, acting etudes, abstract visions and sometimes surprising associations, produces a visual image. Garbaczewski’s vision goes well together with music, while the set design and costumes of actors-dancers, dressed in white diapers and translucent white tops, kept the performance in a minimalist and austere convention.

The act of creation

A madrigal opera returned to the stage of the Opera Rara Festival. The premiere of the performance took place in 2017, in the hall of Blessed James in the Franciscan monastery, which added a raw, ascetic touch to the piece. This year, the organisers made the decision to stage its performance at MOCAK. Glass’ perverse experiment can also be perceived as a sign of not only a desire to enter a new territory, but also of the composer’s cunning – with newer and newer ideas for its stage interpretation, A madrigal opera will constantly remain a contemporary piece – not only open, but also an enduring one. And the act of its creation, as well as the music of Glass, will constantly play out anew.

Masquerades, costumes and dangerous switches

The carnival – the time of entertainment, masked balls, and… the Opera Rara Festival. A time when our social standards and rules cease to apply. Cosi fan tutte gets rid of this corset of moral obligations and injunctions. Farce, cynicism and irony are combined here with poetic undertones, while the plot focuses on love intrigue and disguises. Two officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, praise the beauty and virtue of their fiancés – two sisters, Dorabella and Fiordiligi. The old sceptic, Don Alfonso, who listens to them boasting, doubts that the women’s feelings are true and stable, and makes a bet with the two officers, asking them to test their lovers’ hearts. His test requires young men dressed as Albanians to try and seduce the two sisters; however, when they take on their roles, they also become victims of their nasty desires, as when they seduce their partners, they experience the pain of betrayal. The atmosphere of a masquerade and impersonating various characters, stage tricks and the motif of infidelity brings Così fan tutte closer to an earlier opera by the Mozart – da Ponte duo – Le nozze di Figaro, as well as many more.

Tears, sighs and fainting – all fleeting

In the 18th century, the atmosphere of moral freedom became one of the most important topics for art. In 1782, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses – a work that stirred quite a scandal at the time, and a classic work of indecent literature – was published. Then Mozart and da Ponte took up the subject of manipulating the language of feelings and seduction in their Don Giovanni. Cosi fan tutte was their response to the frivolous feats of the male protagonist and womanizer. By analysing women’s nature, the composer and librettist ridiculed the Enlightenment sentiments and unwavering faith in the stability of feelings. Così fan tutte is a manifestation of Mozart’s unbroken sense of balance between playing with his characters’ feelings and sentimentalism, between tragedy and comedy, morality and sensuality. Among Mozart’s operatic triad, composed to illustrate the librettos by da Ponte, comprising Così fan tutte, along with Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), the former focuses on various emotional states of the protagonists, and it is the one work marked by the greatest emotionality. Its libretto develops logically and in a funny way, while its situational humour and the atmosphere of theatrical entertainment make us perceive it in a different manner than past generations. These days, Così fan tutte entertains, teaches and warns us not to play with feelings.

Not a new thing – but a new rendition

Così fan tutte is another feature of the Generation Opera stream of the Opera Rara Festival. The popular stage work will be presented in a completely new way, as Cezary Tomaszewski – a choreographer, performer and director known for his unconventional musical performances presented with Capella Cracoviensis (Monteverdi in a milk bar, Gluck in a gymnasium, and Moniuszko in a Krakow salon) is responsible for directing the popular piece. Tomaszewski is appreciated for his brilliant humour and perverse way of talking about simple things. He does not put music on the pedestal and sparks debates with his performances.

The play will feature Ana Maria Labin – a renowned interpreter of female characters in Mozart’s operas, as well as Katarzyna Oleś-Blacha, Natalia Kawałek, Przemysław Borys, Piotr Szewczyk, Monika Korybalska-Kozarek, Sebastian Szumski, Marzena Lubaszka, Jacek Ozimkowski and the Portuguese baritone André Baleiro. The soloists will be accompanied by Capella Cracoviensis under the baton of Jan Tomasz Adamus and the Krakow Burgher Choir.

The feelings and intrigues of the protagonists in Così fan tutte will be subjected to a scientific analysis aimed at learning the algorithm of emotions and sensuality – the alchemy of love.

For the Krakow Festival Office – Agnieszka Lakner, musicologist