Set Designer

A Tsar, wanting to have his photograph taken has no idea he’s surrounded by conspirator’s planning his assassination. And a young woman, who can outsmart anybody – even a King.

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The Tsar wants his Photograph taken / The Clever Woman

Oper Frankfurt

In a brutal world where revenge is enacted with the axe, Klytämnestra has murdered her husband Agamemnon. Their daughter Elektra is consumed by her grief and is fixated on vengeance against her mother. Justice must be served.

San Francisco Opera’s production, praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “extraordinary” and “stunning,” brings us to a modern-day museum and an exhibit on Elektra. A young woman grappling with her own life is pulled into the ancient narrative in this ingenious production by Keith Warner—a taut psychological thriller in which the past and the present become one.

Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts Richard Strauss’ expressionist masterpiece, replete with one of the largest orchestras in the repertoire. The intense emotions of this Greek tragedy are rendered on a vast scale by Strauss’ massive soundscape and a score that winds up the dramatic tension with an intensity that can only lead to one horrific outcome.

Elektra

War Memorial Opera House

The director's motto for this striking production is a phrase taken from Nirvana frontman Curt Cobain's farewell letter: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata , in Mariusz Treliński's staging, is a spectacle about a star who burns out in its own light. In the director's interpretation, Verdi's masterpiece becomes a portrait of the artistic community.

La Traviata

Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly cannot accept that her great love is doomed to end in heartbreak.

Madama Butterfly

Semperoper Dresden

Since the premiere of the Warsaw version of Halka in 1858, Stanisław Moniuszko's opera has enjoyed cult status. The story of a highlander's unhappy love for a young master remains one of the most important artifacts of Polish (pop) culture. The opera's extraordinary success stems from its skillful blend of spectacular spectacle with important social themes, primarily class exclusion. After all, the tragic ending of the love story is linked to misplaced love – Halka and Janusz are separated by a gulf of social class differences.

Halka

The story of Cio-Cio-San is one of Giacomo Puccini's most beautiful love operas. And to think, the premiere of this production in 1904 at La Scala in Milan was one of the composer's most bitter experiences. The atmosphere in the audience was unbearable. The audience chanted "La Bohème!!!" – accusing the composer of duplicating musical passages, booed, and yawned loudly. The performance was a complete failure. Critics also lambasted the composer. Only after several changes were made and a performance at the Teatro Grande in Brescia did the opera triumph. Seven encores were required, and from then on, it has been a popular addition to the repertoire of opera houses around the world.

Madame Butterfly

The story of Cio-Cio-San is one of the most beautiful Puccini operas about love. To think that its 1904 premiere at Milan’s La Scala was one of the most bitter experiences in the composer’s life! The atmosphere in the auditorium was almost unbearable. ‘La Bohème!’ chanted the crowd, accusing Puccini of reusing his musical ideas, while booing and yawning ostentatiously. The performance was a complete and utter failure. The composer was savaged by the critics. Rewritten and restaged at the Teatro Grande in Brescia, the opera scored an ultimate triumph. The audience demanded encores of seven passages and the opera became a favourite with theatre programmers around the world.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Verdi’s grand tale of ill-fated love, deadly vendetta, and family strife, with stellar soprano Lise Davidsen following a string of recent Met triumphs with her role debut as the noble Leonora, one of the repertory’s most tormented—and thrilling—heroines. Director Mariusz Treliński delivers the company’s first new Forza in nearly 30 years, setting the scene in a contemporary world and making extensive use of the Met’s turntable to represent the unstoppable advance of destiny that drives the opera’s chain of calamitous events.

La Forza del Destino

Lincoln Center

Each night, the young Cio-Cio-San looks out over the port of Nagasaki, eagerly waiting the return of her husband, U.S. Naval officer Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton. Alongside her is their young son, Trouble, who has never met his father. But disappointment is about to sail across the horizon when Pinkerton arrives with his recently wedded American wife. Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts a new staging of Puccini’s heartbreaking drama from director Amon Miyamoto, who reimagines this classic through the eyes of Trouble.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

At the centre of Giacomo Puccini's Tragedia giapponese, set in Nagasaki at the beginning of the 20th century, is the young geisha Cio-Cio-San, called »Butterfly«. The American Naval Lieutenant Pinkerton enters into a short-term marriage with Cio-Cio-San – according to a possible practice in Japan at the time – and rents the right house for the stay. While for Pinkerton the liaison was planned from the outset as an erotic pleasure, for Cio-Cio-San it means not only the opportunity to escape poverty, but the love of her life ... Even today, the tragic love story, which premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1904, touches hearts, shaken by the realism with which the cultural misunderstandings and their deadly consequences are pointed out. Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, together with star designer Kenzō Takada, presents his own Eastern view of the Japanese-American liaison.

Directed by Mariusz Treliński and designed by Boris Kudlička, this production of Madama Butterfly premiered over a quarter of a century ago, in 1999. It was an epoch-making performance. Just like Emperor Meiji modernised Japan at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Treliński and Kudlička revolutionised the idiom of Polish opera. Coincidentally, the Meiji era (1868–1912) is when the story of Madame Butterfly is set – the libretto cites the year 1904. The period saw Japan’s transformation from a feudal state dominated by the Tokugawa shogunate into a modern country with a thriving economy and culture. Treliński and Kudlička’s achievement was an event of similar magnitude for Polish (and international) opera. Owing to their imaginativeness and sensitivity, the two artists paved the way for the introduction of a more accessible and universal language into contemporary opera directing. The production is not just a story about Butterfly’s love or a study of the clash between two cultures; it is a token of cultural transformation.

Set Designer

Boris Kudlička

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 22 - Nov 21, 2026

Madama Butterfly · Polish National Opera

Past events

14 - 27 Jun, 2026

The Tsar wants his Photograph taken / The Clever Woman · Oper Frankfurt

7 - 27 Jun, 2026

Elektra · San Francisco Opera

About

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