‘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

Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera

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

An opera about Auschwitz seemed unimaginable. And yet, it did. It was composed by Mieczysław Weinberg, a Polish-Jewish Varsovian who lost his family in the camp and of whom the opera's director, David Pountney, said that he "spent his life creating music in memory of his lost loved ones." Weinberg was inspired by the novel The Passenger (1962) by Zofia Posmysz. The author survived the camp. The decision to bear witness to the cruelty of the Holocaust was obvious to her. The Passenger describes a voyage on a luxury ocean liner, during which the Polish woman Marta recognizes the elegant woman, Lisa, an SS overseer from Auschwitz (the German woman's real name is Annelise Franz). Weinberg's music, in keeping with the action, is diverse, realistic, and symbolic at once; different when it accompanies conversations in the sun on the ship's deck, with the orchestra playing for the passengers to dance to, and different when the hell of Auschwitz unfolds below deck. The prisoners are of different nationalities, so their solo singing, as well as the seven-voice Song of Life and Death , is multilingual. The prisoners ' Requiem for the Black Wall echoes with the bell, Bach's Chaconne , and the camp orchestra. Weinberg's The Passenger, completed in 1968 in the Soviet Union, could not be performed there because its content was too reminiscent of Soviet labor camps. Only in 2006, after the composer's death, was it performed in Moscow in concert. Did staging an opera about Auschwitz seem impossible? And yet, it was. David Pountney produced it in 2010. First, there was the Bregenz Festival and Warsaw. Then London, Houston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Florida. And everywhere, every time: a stage bisected by light and sound. A cheerful, prosperous Europe. And the hell of the Holocaust. Its memory endures. The world cannot forget.

Tomasz Rak

Events

Past events

16 - 27 Oct, 2026

Mothers of Kherson · Polish National Opera

23 - 31 May, 2026

La Traviata · Polish National Opera

Future and recently performed repertoire

Baron Douphol in La traviata by Verdi

Polish National Opera

Thaddeus in The Passenger by Weinberg

Polish National Opera

Rescue Planner in The Mothers of Kherson by Kolomiiets

Polish National Opera

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