2015-11-18

On 20 November, the Baltic Opera will present Zygmunt Krauze's "Olimpia z Gdańska" (Olympe from Gdańsk) opera for the first time. After the success of his last opera ("Pułapka" [The Trap], 2011), the composer reached for the fascinating biography of Stanisława Przybyszewska and told the story about seeking freedom with his music.

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.

The successive opera scenes take place in Stanisława's shabby room in Gdańsk, in the early 1930s. Fascinated by Maximilien de Robespierre and his ideas, Stanisława takes an oneiric and initiation journey back in time: to Paris of the end of the 18th century. Przybyszewska is completely immersed in writing a novel about Olympe de Gouges. She participates in the French Revolution and, as the action evolves, undergoes a deep metamorphosis: she takes the side of Olympe, rejecting Robespierre’s ideology.

Marek Weiss, Director of the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk, said that: "This long-awaited opera has been announced under different working titles. The final version, accepted by the composer, offers the best rendering of the complex character of a story about the brilliant writer Stanisława Przybyszewska. She was embroiled both in her tragic life, where she was overshadowed by her cruel father, and in her virtual life where she was dominated by her fascination with the French Revolution and its tyrannical leader, Robespierre. Ending her life in poverty with narcotic nightmares, Przybyszewska died in Gdańsk. She was buried there in an already inexistent graveyard. We remember her as an amazing woman with a distinct and admirable personality that has been preserved in books, yet she had a miserable life that was shrouded by a dark mystery. The authors of the opera, which was commissioned by the Baltic Opera and the City of Gdańsk, present a poetic brief of a lone writer’s torment and attempts to identify herself with the character of her novel, Olympe de Gouges, who was bound to Robespierre to her own destruction. This tragic figure, Olympe de Gouges, is now attaining much popularity in France. Many people are working toward the goal of transferring her ashes to the Panthéon in Paris, where she would be laid next to Maria Curie".

"Olimpia from Gdańsk is an opera that evades the traditional theatre narrative", stresses the director of the 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]). ."