The annual event will start with a recital by Latvian opera singer Elīna Garanča, one of the world’s most acclaimed mezzo-sopranos.
The festival, held at venues including Warsaw's National Opera, focuses on French music, including Méditation from Jules Massenet’s Thaïs, the aria Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah, and a selection of the most famous arias of the eponymous heroine of Bizet’s Carmen, which is Garanča’s signature role.
On Sunday, the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Olari Elts will perform works by Finnish composers Jean Sibelius and Lotta Wennäkoski, Edward Elgar’s symphonic prelude Polonia and the Second Violin Concerto by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), with Israeli virtuoso Vadim Gluzman as the soloist.
Polish music will also feature prominently in a concert by the British choir The Sixteen, with works by Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki (1665–1734), Bartłomiej Pękiel (1633–1670) and Marcin Mielczewski (1600–1651), performed alongside those by Italian masters such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giovanni Francesco Anerio and Luca Marenzio.
Festival highlights include music by contemporary Polish composers Paweł Szymański and Paweł Mykietyn, as well as a new production of Krzysztof Penderecki’s opera The Black Mask. Directed by Britain’s David Pountney, the production will be staged at the National Opera in Warsaw on November 22, on the eve of the 91st anniversary of the birth of Penderecki, who died in 2020 at the age of 86.
The work, with a libretto based on a 1928 play by Gerhart Hauptmann, had its world premiere in 1986.
Pountney has described the opera a "a present-day warning against building social order on fragile foundations."
The festival runs until December 8 in Warsaw and other venues. These include the cities of Lublin, Kraków and Katowice, in addition to Penderecki’s birthplace town of Dębica and Lusławice, the seat of the Penderecki European Centre for Music.
(mk/gs)