Zygmunt Krauze, Olympia Of Gdansk

Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego

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Zygmunt Krauze

Olympia of Gdansk

Opera in nine scenes

Publisher: PWM Edition

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Cat. no. 11629

Stanisława Przybyszewska is the leading character in the opera. An illegitimate daughter of Stanisław Przybyszewski, a famous writer of the Young Poland period, she went down in history as the author of the popular play The Danton Case. Denied and forgotten, she died in Gdańsk in dire poverty at the age of 33, exhausted by illness and morphine.

"Olimpia from Gdańsk is an opera that evades the traditional theatre narrative", stresses the director of the first performance, Jerzy Lach. "The real world in which Stanisława Przybyszewska lives and works is intertwined with the literary world of the novel written by the main character. The novel is set in the French Revolution or, in fact, in its pathological decline. The mixture of these two worlds creates the new world of theatre magic. Stanisława's room is haunted both by real characters, e.g. her Father and the artistic bohemia of the 1920s, and the figures of the French Revolution, including Robespierre. Sometimes the third world is evoked by drugs, which is an implication of the real and literary worlds and brings something that is surreal or even cosmic. These worlds are inhabited by people who, irrespective of time /present or past/, have the same relations with other people. One could say that we repeat the same stories and situations over time. It is as if we got stopped in the vicious circle of repetitions".

And Zygmunt Krauze commented that: "In “Olympia of Gdańsk” we meet Stanisława Przybyszewska, a writer and drug addict infatuated by physical love to her own father who molested her when she was an adolescent. Stanisława is also possessed by her imaginary love for Maximilien Robespierre. She is seen as trying to finish her new novel about Olympe de Gouges, a heroine of the French Revolution and author of the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,” with whom Stanisława identifies. Real (though not living at the time of Stanisława’s writing) and imagined figures appear in nine opera scenes. Although Stanisława is dreaming, she is also suffering from morphine induced hallucinations. The opera is sung in Polish and French. What I am looking for in the opera is the person, her (or his) character, attitude and emotions. Singing is supposed to magnify the experiences and emotional conflicts of the characters. This is that kind of spectacle where the role of the theatrical element is equivalent to the one of music. “Olympia of Gdańsk” continues this theatrical and dramatic trend, demonstrated in my five earlier operas (Gwiazda [The Star], Baltazar [Balthasar], Iwona księżniczka Burgunda [Yvonne, the Princess of Burgundy], Polieukt [Polyeucte] and Pułapka [The Trap])."

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