Performers
Opera Orchestra of the National Theatre Košice
Peter Valentovič – conductor
Anton Korenči – stage director
soloists: Michał Partyka, Gabriela Hrženjak, Maksym Kutsenko, Juraj Hollý, Michal Onufer, Myroslava Havryliuk, André Tatarka
Program
Karol Szymanowski – King Roger, semi-staged opera performance
Admission 35, 30, 25 € Tickets
Fascination with Italy and its culture, as well as works by Euripides, Plato and Nietzsche inspired the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski to compose his supreme opera work King Roger. He wrote the libretto in collaboration with his distant relative, later the well-known writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. “Szymanowski himself referred to his work as a ‘mystery’ – his themes are self-knowledge, sexuality, altered states of consciousness, but also religion and new forms of spirituality,” the note to the performance of the National Theatre Košice states. Its premiere in Košice last year aroused an unprecedented response; the encounter with this rarely staged opera will certainly be attractive also for the festival audience, as it is experiencing its renaissance on world stages and offers us “unsolvable riddles of being” (J. Iwaszkiewicz).
