The Winter Journey

8 February; 24 April 2012, 6:30pm

Kraków Opera recommends a new performance! Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a cycle of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller, set for voice and piano by Franz Schubert in 1827. In Kraków Opera we will hear the Schubert's cycle with poems written in 1994 by Polish poet Stanisław Barańczak. His Winterreise (Podróż zimowa in Polish) is a metaphorical journey to the promised land, torn between the ominous world full of danger and decline and the overwhelming sense of entertainment, adventure and lack of afterthought. 

Schubert used Müller's poems, for they corresponded with the composer's state of mind. He was feeling depressed and lonely, and feared for the premature death (he died in fact in November 1828, about a year after finishing the Winterreise cycle). Never before and no where else had Schubert's music sounded so sadly...

What was Barańczak's reason for writing his Winter Journey?

Cast:
Andrzej Biegun (baritone)
Konrad Mastyło (piano)
Olha Tsymbalyuk (piano)

Direction and adaptation: Józef Opalski
Set design and costumes: Marek Braun
Musical direction: Konrad Mastyło
Scene movement: Jacek Tomasik

Premiere: 10 February 2011