Halka
| Halka | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Stanisław Moniuszko | |
The composer
|
|
| Librettist | Włodzimierz Wolski |
| Language | Polish |
| Premiere | 28 February 1854 Vilnius |
Halka is an opera by Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko to a libretto written by Włodzimierz Wolski, a young Warsaw poet with radical social views. It is part of the of Polish national operas.
The first performance of the two-act version was in a concert performance in Vilnius on 1 January 1848. The staged premiere took place in the same city on 28 February 1854. A four-act version was performed in Warsaw on 1 January 1858. The opera was subsequently produced in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Russia and Cuba.
More recently, in June 2004 the Opera has been staged in Kraków Zakrzówek Nature Park as an outdoor performance with horses, fireworks, special effects, and attendance exceeding 6,000 viewers. It was produced by Krzysztof Jasiński under the musical direction of Wojciech Michniewski, with the ballet and orchestra of the Opera Krakowska and with Ewa Biegas and Maria Mitrosz alternating in the title role. The Opera has been produced again on stage of the Kraków Opera in December 2011 (performed till February 2012) with sopranos Magdalena Barylak, Ewa Biegas, and Ewa Vesin, as well as Mariusz Kwiecien, soloist of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In 2010 a new English translation by Donald Pippin was performed by Pocket Opera in San Francisco and Berkeley. The opera was originally performed in the United States by the Polonia Opera Company under its director Louis Kowalski. He staged the opera in many cities with Polish populations, such as New York in Carnegie Hall, Detroit, Hartford and Chicago. He last staged Halka at Carnegie Hall on May 24, 1959, about 6 months before his death. He was survived by his wife, Carolyn Kowalski, his daughter Wanda and his son, Theodore.
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