2024-06-11

A common memory game that allows us to look at an ordinary family from an unusual perspective. FAMILY ALBUM - an opera by Jerzy Kornowicz based on a libretto by Michał Rusinek - is another premiere of the ANAKLASIS. This time, the audience is expanded to include the youngest of listeners. The album will be released on June 21.

Memory brings pictures to life. Photographs in family albums, documenting important events, enchanting moments in frames and portraits of loved ones evoke memories, provoke reflection and bring the past back to life. At the same time, they also reveal what has been forgotten, which is sometimes interesting and amusing.

‘I made up my mind to go gaga for a few weeks and write some verse loosely based on the bios of my family members,’ explains Michał Rusinek, otherwise a serious and reputable literary scholar, translator, and writer. ‘My ancestors were apparently rather ordinary. Still, I am convinced that even a very ordinary family can be viewed from an unusual perspective. Every one of us has their eccentricities, as well as some adventures or anecdotes from their biographies to recount.’ 

These anecdotes added up to form the libretto of an opera, set to music by another extremely serious artist – the composer Jerzy Kornowicz, who is also an improvising pianist, educator, and music life organiser, director of the ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music. He too, nevertheless, allowed himself to be guided by Rusinek’s text into the carefree, magical land of childhood. ‘Ours is a time in which we occupy several worlds at the same time. We are probably the least present in the real world since we have no clue what it is all about,’ says the composer of A FAMILY ALBUM. The music perfectly reflects this state. Singers Ewa Biegas and Jan Jakub Monowid are accompanied by AUKSO – Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy under Marek Moś.

The opera (for children, but not only) was first performed on 11 March 2023 in Katowice, at the NOSPR's Premiere Festival. At the end of the same year, it was released in Ukrainian translation in Kyiv and Lviv, where it received a very favourable reception.

The album with the recording of the work and rich illustrations by Joanna Rusinek will go on sale on 21 June 2024. The album will be available on CD in the PWM bookstore, in the best music shops, on the empik virtual store and in streaming services.

Media patrons: TVP Kultura, Programme 2 of the Polish Radio, Culture.pl
Partner: Ruch Muzyczny

ANAKLASIS
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