Lighting Designer

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

A sovereign may do as he wishes. His entire surroundings depend on him, no-one is entitled to contradict him, all must suffer his moods. Only one may hold a mirror to him, is even obliged to criticise the ruler – the jester. But what happens when this fool neglects his most important task and puts himself at the service of the moral excesses exemplified by the tyrant? In his play Le Roi s’amuse (The King Amuses Himself), the French dramatist Victor Hugo went through this starting position with an unscrupulous fun-lover as the king, and a fool whose spiritual deformation has manifested itself in a hunchback.

Rigoletto

Max-Joseph-Platz

Die Frau ohne Schatten is the fourth opera created in collaboration between composer Richard Strauss and writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The work is full of ambiguous symbolism, yet simultaneously focuses on fundamental human experiences: love, loneliness, unfulfillment, and longing.

A woman without a shadow

Before Giacomo Puccini began composing La Bohème , which became one of the most frequently performed operas in the world, he was planning an opera about the life of Buddha. At the same time, he was drawn to the eroticism of La She-Wolf , set in Sicily. He was dissuaded from this latter project by Wagner's stepdaughter, Liszt's granddaughter, who was horrified by the story's intense brutality. With the help of the seasoned librettists Luigi Illica and Giovanni Giacosa, Puccini embarked on a free adaptation of Scenes from the Life of the Bohemians , a celebrated book by Henry Murger that unvarnishedly depicts the miserable existence of the Parisian "artistic proletariat." The book captivated me immediately. I felt like part of a family: freshness, youth, passion, gaiety, tears shed in silence, a love that gives joy and demands suffering. There are people, feelings, and heart. But above all, there is poetry, divine Poetry ," Puccini enthused, finding in Murger many familiar experiences. After the success of Manon Lescaut (1892), he was able to buy a villa in Torre del Lago, but he still remembered the hungry and cold student years he had spent in Milan.

La bohème

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 extraordinary power inherent in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana , perhaps one of the world's most recognizable works of classical music, from its very first sound touches the imagination of listeners and viewers in a very direct and open way. The phrases and lyrics, set in a medieval context, yet framed by almost contemporary music, create a universal message about the laws of this world to which we are equally subject, great or small, at the dawn of life or at its end. Orff thought in music, thought in words, thought in theater. He inscribed the meaning of his work in intersecting dimensions," writes Waldemar Dąbrowski, general director of the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera in Warsaw, about Carl Orff's work.

Carmina Burana (The Blink of an Eye)

TOSCA

After 13 years, Mariusz Treliński again reaches for Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov , an operatic historical fresco, but also a psychological drama revealing the mechanism of gaining and consolidating power taken over by violence and deceit. The director first approached Boris Godunov in 2008, first staging it at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater in Vilnius, and a year later at the National Opera in Warsaw. The press wrote then that in Treliński's interpretation it was "a cold and raw, but suggestive story about a ruler killed by remorse" ("Ruch Muzyczny") and "a story about the rise of the tsar's power and his fall" (Gazeta Wyborcza). 

Boris Godunov*

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.

EPSG:4326

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.

Madame Butterfly

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

‘Do not get used to our suffering’ implored Olena Zelenska in 2024, reminding the world about the ongoing war in Ukraine. The Mothers of Kherson is a response to the appeal. It was co-produced by the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, two institutions that have been actively supporting the embattled nation since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. One of their joint projects is the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra led by conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who has also been involved in the process of developing the new opera.

Mothers of Kherson

Not unlike Picasso or Klimt, Puccini painted a series of fascinating and multifaceted female portraits. His Manon, Mimi, Tosca, Cio-Cio-San, Magda, and the seemingly frigid Turandot who secretly pines for love, continue to spellbind opera audiences across the world. As time goes by, the characters do not lose any of their distinct flavour, appeal, and relevance, although their stories are set is long-gone realities. Ever since its 1900 premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, Tosca has sold-out nearly everywhere it was put on. The tragic love story involving blackmail, cruelty, different dimensions of humanity and its lack, crime, and amoral attitudes fascinates audiences that become engulfed by this deadly love tornado.

Tosca

The richest man in Vienna is treating his guests to a spectacular celebration. For the occasion, he has commissioned a new opera seria, Ariadne auf Naxos. On the evening of the premiere, the composer discovers to his horror that he has to share the bill with a buffet, a comedy and a fireworks display. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the host introduces a change of plan: because the fireworks have to start on time, the tragedy and comedy are to be performed, not one after the other, but simultaneously! In this highly original opera, ‘high’ and ‘low’ art thus compete for the audience’s attention.

Lighting Designer

Marc Heinz

Events

Upcoming events

Mar 7 - Jul 31, 2026

Rigoletto · Bayerische Staatsoper

16 - 27 Oct, 2026

Mothers of Kherson · Polish National Opera

2 - 16 Jan, 2027

Tosca · Polish National Opera

Jan 24 - Feb 9, 2027

Ariadne auf Naxos · La Monnaie / De Munt

Past events

23 - 31 May, 2026

La Traviata · Polish National Opera

Mar 7 - Jul 31, 2026

Rigoletto · Bayerische Staatsoper

About

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