In Barrie Kosky's production of The Magic Flute, everything is straight out of a fairy tale, and every idea demonstrates the director's immense sense of humor, who must have thoroughly enjoyed the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. When the red curtain opens, the audience sees only a white screen, where the frolics begin – the director imaginatively juggles, to the rhythm of Mozart's music, elements of silent film, slapstick comedy, and cartoon. The co-creators of this production – Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt of the "1927" ensemble – have combined film animation with live theater. The effect is dazzling. Here, Papageno, this bawdy simpleton, here portrayed as a sad clown in the style of Buster Keaton, gets drunk in the company of pink elephants honking cocktails from narrow glasses. The Queen of the Night is a giant spider, Monostatos appears as a pale vampire in a Count Dracula costume, and Pamina wears a black wig with fringe, which makes her resemble the actress and dancer Louise Brooks, a star of silent films.

The Magic Flute

Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera

Nearly two hundred people on stage, live horses, a grand set, and lavish costumes – Mark Weiss's Nabucco is a total spectacle, a true synthesis of the arts. "Opera isn't made like that anymore" – all the more reason to see it. It's a historical production in the strict sense – as a staple of the National Opera, in the repertoire since 1992, but also because the director consciously crafted his project as if Verdi's contemporaries had done it, emphasizing monumentality and additional, almost circus-like attractions. Musically, this early Verdi work is atypical, somewhere between an opera and an oratorio, because the real protagonist is the chorus. Its constant presence is crowned by " Va pensiero," the most famous choral aria in history, audible and overwhelming here, all the more so because it's sung against the backdrop of the lowered Iron Curtain (the Wailing Wall is projected onto it), which amplifies and echoes the sounds. The director himself intended his work as a pastiche of 19th-century opera, which justifies the clash of "high and low" – Nebuchadnezzar's horse-drawn aria, as tradition would have it, often sends shivers not only through the audience but also through the animal itself, which, so to speak, releases its tension, and the desert scenery is enriched with yet another prop, from a distance resembling small hamada stones.

Nabucco

Ariadne on Naxos was the third opera written by Richard Strauss together with librettist Hugon von Hoffmansthal. Their collaboration had started with the expressionist Elektra, followed two years later by a drastically different, Mozartian Der Rosenkavalier.  Their next project drew heavily on literary inspirations. The one-act opera was meant to be shown at the end of Molièr’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, which Hoffmansthal had just translated into German. The version of Ariadne that prevailed to our times has a prologue setting the metatheatrical stage for the opera. 

Ariadne On Naxos

Krzysztof Penderecki has the ability to build fascinating worlds in his operas. His third work for the stage, The Black Mask, transports the audience into the future, to a Lower Silesian town of Bolkenhain (now: Bolków).

The Black Mask

In the 2021/2022 season, the stage of the Grand Theater - National Opera was taken over by Barbara Radziwiłłówna thanks to her concert performance of Henryk Jarecki's opera. This time, an equally legendary figure will appear - Beatrix Cenci. However, while Barbara is shown as innocence incarnate who becomes a victim of crime, Beatrix is ​​her opposite - a pure heroine forced to commit a wicked act.

Beatrix Cenci (concert Version)

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.

Remigiusz Łukomski

Events

Upcoming events

15 - 28 Feb, 2026

A woman without a shadow · Polish National Opera

Past events

Dec 3, 2025 - Jan 4, 2026

The Magic Flute · Polish National Opera

25 - 31 Oct, 2025

Nabucco · Polish National Opera

Future and recently performed repertoire

One-armed in Die Frau ohne Schatten by Strauss

Polish National Opera

Sarastro/The Speaker in The Magic Flute by Mozart

Polish National Opera

High priest in Nabucco by Verdi

Polish National Opera

About

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