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The beginning of 2017 will be an extraordinary time for the Lodz Grand Theatre. On 19 January 1967, the building at Dąbrowski Square was opened and the theatre launched its activity under the name Lodz Grand Theatre. Now, half a century after the premiere of Stanisław Moniuszko’s HALKA we present the anniversary stage production of this important Polish opera. On 21 January, we kindly invite you for the premiere of HALKA directed by Jarosław Kilian and conducted by Wojciech Rodek.

29 January, 5.00 p.m. / BUY TICKET

While Fredric Chopin was recognized in France as a cultural ambassador of the oppressed Polish nation, his younger fellow composer, Stanisław Moniuszko, worked in the field of culture in their homeland. Just like Chopin, Moniuszko in his works tried to combine Western European Romanticism with the spirit of the Polish culture. Halka is without a doubt an example of successful combination of features of Italian, French and German opera with elements typical for Polish folklore and music tradition. Moreover, Halka, thanks to its patriotic and social significance, became an expression of Polish national identity.
In order to understand this opera story about an abandoned girl, we have to set it in the right context – of a social discord, which at Moniuszko's time led to the bloody Gallician slaughter. Halka is a young woman sustained between two worlds: of the immoral nobility and vengeful highlanders. There are no unambiguously bad or good characters here. It is not a tearful melodrama. It is a cruel parable of human loneliness.