Conductor

Puccini TOSCA 2018 Finnish National Opera (English Subtitles)

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

Verdi's last work, in the popular tradition, is a lighthearted comedy about a fat drunkard who cynically seduces two women and is severely punished by them. However, when one carefully examines the Shakespearean original and carefully analyzes the extraordinary richness of the musical motifs, one discovers a darker undercurrent to this mysterious work, which the aged, accomplished composer consciously wrote as a farewell to his immense legacy, his own impressive life, and the world he philosophically viewed as the creator's painful joke on people and their actions. Reaching this undercurrent and revealing its supreme artistic beauty seems worth departing from the stereotype of a protagonist supposedly engaged solely in enjoying the remnants of the pleasures of table and bed, and in fairground clowning.

Falstaff

In 2020, the National Opera in Warsaw celebrated the 55th anniversary of the reconstruction of its historic home on Teatralny Square. The ambitious project of raising the theatre from ruins was completed 20 years after the war, with the grand opening of the modernized Grand Theatre on November 19, 1965. Shortly thereafter, the Warsaw Opera ensemble, including its distinguished choir, moved in from its temporary home on Nowogrodzka Street.

Chorus Opera

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

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

Let's briefly recall the main plot of this ambiguous myth. The Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods, one of the attributes of their power over the world, to make its benefits available to ordinary mortals and contribute to the development of humanity. Offended by this sacrilege, Zeus decided to take cruel revenge on both the brave man and humanity. He chained Prometheus to the rocks of the Caucasus and daily sent an Eagle to eat the condemned man's liver by day. At night, the liver would grow back, and Prometheus's suffering would begin anew. Simultaneously, the ruler of Olympus decided to test humanity. He ordered the creation of a woman named Pandora, whom the gods endowed with dazzling beauty and many talents, and Zeus gave her a mysterious Box as a dowry for her future husband. However, the gift was subject to a prohibition against opening it. The gullible Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus, married Pandora, who, yielding to her curiosity, opened the Box, releasing all the misfortunes that have befallen humanity ever since. Fortunately, Hope was also hidden within Pandora's Box, which remains there to this day as a solace for humanity.

Prometheus

That which Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir or Odilon Redon meant for painting, Claude Debussy meant for music. His compositions, teeming with imagination, manifold colours and fleeting atmospheres, straddle two epochs – Romanticism and Modernism – actually co-forming the borderline itself. At the turn of the 20th century, the arts, music included, underwent ground-breaking changes, with opera being no exception. Pioneers of modern music – such as Debussy and Igor Stravinsky – assumed a rather standoffish attitude to the genre, hesitant as to how to approach the “obsolete form”. Debussy attempted to write several operas, yet only succeeded in a single case. The one and only opera he completed is the today iconic adaptation of the Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pélleas et Mélisande. Debussy’s setting is devoid of conventional grand operatic gesture and effect, giving preference instead to an intimate music drama, with everything decisive happening “between the lines” – in allusions, silence and delicate, symbolic details.

Pelléas et Mélisande

National Theatre Prague

The world’s most famous horror story about the Transylvanian count returns to the ballet stage. Krzysztof Pastor’s choreography was immensely popular in its premiere season in 2024 and is now revived by popular demand. The music by Wojciech Kilar was also heard in the Oscar-winning film Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola.

Conductor

Patrick Fournillier

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 15 - Nov 19, 2026

Pelléas et Mélisande · Národní divadlo

Oct 30 - Nov 18, 2026

Dracula · Finnish National Opera and Ballet

Past events

23 - 31 May, 2026

La Traviata · Polish National Opera

17 - 26 Apr, 2026

Falstaff · Polish National Opera

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in La traviata by Verdi

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Turandot by Puccini

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Carmina Burana by Orff

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Otello by Verdi

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy

Národní divadlo

Conductor in La bohème by Puccini

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Il Trovatore by Verdi

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Madame Butterfly by Puccini

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Madama Butterfly by Puccini

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Requiem in D minor by Mozart

Polish National Opera

Conductor in The Flying Dutchman by Wagner

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Don Carlos by Verdi

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Symphony No. 11 by Glass

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Falstaff by Verdi

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Dracula by Kilar

Finnish National Opera and Ballet

Conductor in King Roger by Szymanowski

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Carmen by Bizet

Polish National Opera

Conductor in Symphony No. 7 by Penderecki

Polish National Opera

Conductor in The Haunted Manor by Moniuszko

Polish National Opera

About

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