…Oh Theseus, oh my Theseus,
yes, I still call you mine
for mine you are,
although you flee,
cruel one, far from my eyes.
Turn back, my Theseus,
turn back, Theseus,
o God, turn back to see again the one,
who for you has left her fatherland and kingdom,
and who, staying on these shores,
a prey to cruel and pitiless beasts,
will leave her bones denuded…
Fragment of C. Monteverdi’s “Lamento d’Arianna”
…
Jaga Hupało: “MISTERO DI ANTONIA is a continuation of a project that is an integral part of my professional life. The whole idea was born in a magical place that fate had given me – Leśna Ostoja Sztuki (the Forest Art Refuge) – a place associated with my childhood, which is located at the foot of the Bardzkie Mountains, in Lower Silesia. It is this space and the time spent together with the team that gave us inspiration and the will to create an engaging story, touching the dilemmas of the ascent world. The movie is an expression of our creative explorations, passions and our own fears and hopes. I invited many artists to the project, who were captivated by the idea of a film devoid of commercialism, made with artistic goals, out of concern for the beauty of nature while maintaining responsible creativity. We were accompanied by the UBUNTU slogan “I am because you are”. The title MISTERO DI ANTONIA is an idea brought up by Elwira Janasik – Antonia is my daughter’s name, and here it symbolises the young generation that takes over the responsibility for the earth and nature.” Elwira Janasik: “I have devoted a lot of time, attention, hard work and my own heart in preparing my interpretation of Lamento d’Arianna. For me it was a dream come true to combine baroque opera with Miss God’s ambient music.” Andrzej Miękus: “MISTERO DI ANTONIA is the second act in the film series Mary Jagi, created out of concern for nature and out of love for beauty. It was inspired by Tomek Sikora’s photographs and Lamento d’Arianna, the only preserved musical fragment from an opera by Claudio Monteverdi composed in 1608. The title heroine laments the passing of Theseus, her lost love. In our film, Ariadne represents NATURE, who entrusted herself to man with full confidence. We cannot see her, although she fills the whole picture. We hear a lament performed by the outstanding mezzo-soprano Elwira Janasik, circling disturbingly around our main character, Jaga Hupało, and the ghosts that follow her. Jaga acts as a SHAMAN, desperately trying to connect both worlds – the world of nature and the human world. All this is accompanied by disturbing sounds composed by Miss God. As Slavoy Ziźek said: “The only way to deal with the ecological crisis is to accept our total alienation from nature.” And Gerhard Richter added that “Art is the highest form of hope”. For us, both quotes are the starting point for a story that combines opera art, fashion and nature.”
…
Concept: Jaga Hupało, Elwira Janasik, Andrzej Miękus
Director: Andrzej Miękus
Director of Photography: Paweł Jarzyna
Mezzo-soprano: Elwira Janasik
Music: Miss God
Art Director: Jaga Hupało
Producers: Jaga Hupało and Andrzej Miękus
Production: Kazimierz Schmidt Art & Business Consulting for Jaga Hupało Born To Create
Choreography and Dance: Joanna Drabik
Media patronage: www.fashionpost.pl
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]]>Arianna: Let me die! And what do you think can comfort me in such harsh fate, in such great suffering? Let me die! C. Monteverdi: “Lamento d’Arianna”
…
Sylwia Olszyńska: “Working on this project was a special experience for me, mainly due to the previously unknown form of performance, which is a film etude. In addition, one of the most recognizable characters of the mythical world, described in the musical language of the Baroque master. In my work, what I wanted the most was to become the common denominator for the events that took place many centuries ago and became the foundation of our culture and art. This is how I tried to see my heroine, whose story continues through times and spaces, to finally reach us – here and now. Ariadne unravels her thread, hoping it will lead her to her lover. Immersed in a trance, she does not notice that throughout history she has become a prisoner of her own story. If the thread is unwound for too long, it begins to tangle, distancing the woman more and more from the desired goal. The only way out is to tear apart what holds her in order to wake up from the hypnotic dream and start living again.”
Anna Popiel: “We focus on the first part of “Ariadne’s Lament” by Claudio Monteverdi. Lonely Ariadne curses her fate and invokes death. The harsh, uninhabited landscape of Naxos eloquently illustrates the state of mind of a person who has lost the meaning of life and all hope. The mental devastation caused by enormous suffering is reflected not only in the desperate images of a sandy wasteland, but also in the music that resonates perfectly with them. We want to bring Ariadne closer to today’s audience and at the same time enrich the mythological context with slightly less obvious references. Instead of a desert island, we intend to show Bytom – a small but important from the cultural point of view city in Silesia in Poland. It is like a living organism from which the heart has been ripped out and in which its vital functions slowly cease; who only asks for one thing: let me die. We have a meeting of two threads: along with the loss of love, the whole world “dies” for us (instead of the abstract shores of Naxos, we see a specific city landscape in its most nostalgic version); it is a story about a departing world; about a city that was exploited industrially and in a sense “abandoned” to fate, doomed to non-existence. These two threads are linked by the figure of Ariadne, who sings her lament while walking through the streets of Bytom. The red thread symbolizes the love that still burns in Ariadne’s heart, driving her mad; the desire to return to the beloved, an obsessive attempt to recreate his path through the maze; the death our heroine wants; as well as the remnant of life, which still smolders in a sad, neglected and at the same time disturbingly beautiful city.”
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]]>Paweł Szkotak: “The time of the pandemic is a difficult time for everyone, and for those who perform on a daily basis, it is a surprising deprivation of contact with the public they need like air. Hence the idea for an etude in which we include our anxieties and longings. Nature brings back the proper measure of everything we face.”
Ewelina Osowska: “”The Breath” was born out of the need to create. It is our response to the situation in which we unexpectedly found ourselves a few months ago. The isolation caused by the virus made all of us think. Everyone drew different conclusions. We created this short etude out of longing for communing with other people, creators and artists. Paweł Szkotak’s concept is simple and, in my opinion, very moving. It can be interpreted in many ways. For me, it’s a study about liberation. Each of us has a longing for true freedom. We fail to reach for it for various reasons – limitations, burdens, drugs, diseases or social pressure. Who among us does not dream of ditching everything and plunging into limitless peace?”
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]]>Maddalena:
Ah! ah! I laugh heartily, talk like that is cheap enough.
How much is your game worth,
Believe me, I know how to appreciate it.
I am accustomed, handsome lord,
To such a joke.
G. Verdi: quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore” from “Rigoletto”
…
Diego Rojas Ortiz: “This project was a contemplative and absurd humorous collaboration, a pure result of us playing around with the struggles of housework, (chopping your vegetables) without compromising your glamour. I’d say, the creation itself took over!”
Małgorzata Walewska: “The starting point was the idea of crying while cutting onions with a contrasting feeling in the music. This is why I chose one of not so many fragments in the opera for my voice which is about laughing. However the collaboration got way more creative than that, following mine and Diego’s impulses after numerous Zoom meetings. It was an experiment on how to work at such a distance, with time difference, poor internet connection at times and the COVID-19 restrictions. The effect was actually surprising for us as all – this abstract impression on the pandemic safety precautions. The idea to put fake red nails on top of the plastic gloves – I find it a perfect one.”
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]]>Wanda Franek: “Tik Tok is new and quite mysterious for me, it convinced me that I’m not so super young anymore:) I chose a little fragment of “Apollo et Hyacinthus”, the first opera written by W.A. Mozart. Mozart composed it when he was eleven years old and it’s really amazing how young people can be so creative and extraordinary. Would he be running his TikTok account if he lived right now? Let’s bring this genius teenager to life with TikTok! I’m proud I can lend my voice to him to do this:)”
Grzegorz Wełnicki: “My adventure with TikTok began simultaneously with the lockdown in Poland. I have spent a few days looking through the app, unfortunately most of the content was not interesting for me.With time, short films from such protests as #protestkobiet (women’s protest) #czarnyprotest (black protest) or #BLM started to pop up on my phone, and they had 9,9B views! Young people started to use the funny application as a loudspeaker for important issues in the world today. I thought this might be an interesting tool to catch young peoples’ interest and direct it towards opera. This is how, together with artist Wanda Franek and Polish Opera Now, the first opera TikTok production was created.”
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]]>Wanda Franek: “Tik Tok is new and quite mysterious for me, it convinced me that I’m not so super young anymore:) I chose a little fragment of “Apollo et Hyacinthus”, the first opera written by W.A. Mozart. Mozart composed it when he was eleven years old and it’s really amazing how young people can be so creative and extraordinary. Would he be running his TikTok account if he lived right now? Let’s bring this genius teenager to life with TikTok! I’m proud I can lend my voice to him to do this:)”
Grzegorz Wełnicki: “My adventure with TikTok began simultaneously with the lockdown in Poland. I have spent a few days looking through the app, unfortunately most of the content was not interesting for me.With time, short films from such protests as #protestkobiet (women’s protest) #czarnyprotest (black protest) or #BLM started to pop up on my phone, and they had 9,9B views! Young people started to use the funny application as a loudspeaker for important issues in the world today. I thought this might be an interesting tool to catch young peoples’ interest and direct it towards opera. This is how, together with artist Wanda Franek and Polish Opera Now, the first opera TikTok production was created.”
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]]>Wanda Franek: “Tik Tok is new and quite mysterious for me, it convinced me that I’m not so super young anymore:) I chose a little fragment of “Apollo et Hyacinthus”, the first opera written by W.A. Mozart. Mozart composed it when he was eleven years old and it’s really amazing how young people can be so creative and extraordinary. Would he be running his TikTok account if he lived right now? Let’s bring this genius teenager to life with TikTok! I’m proud I can lend my voice to him to do this:)”
Grzegorz Wełnicki: “My adventure with TikTok began simultaneously with the lockdown in Poland. I have spent a few days looking through the app, unfortunately most of the content was not interesting for me.With time, short films from such protests as #protestkobiet (women’s protest) #czarnyprotest (black protest) or #BLM started to pop up on my phone, and they had 9,9B views! Young people started to use the funny application as a loudspeaker for important issues in the world today. I thought this might be an interesting tool to catch young peoples’ interest and direct it towards opera. This is how, together with artist Wanda Franek and Polish Opera Now, the first opera TikTok production was created.”
The post Wanda Franek TikTok 3 appeared first on Polish Opera Now.
]]>Wanda Franek: “Tik Tok is new and quite mysterious for me, it convinced me that I’m not so super young anymore:) I chose a little fragment of “Apollo et Hyacinthus”, the first opera written by W.A. Mozart. Mozart composed it when he was eleven years old and it’s really amazing how young people can be so creative and extraordinary. Would he be running his TikTok account if he lived right now? Let’s bring this genius teenager to life with TikTok! I’m proud I can lend my voice to him to do this:)”
Grzegorz Wełnicki: “My adventure with TikTok began simultaneously with the lockdown in Poland. I have spent a few days looking through the app, unfortunately most of the content was not interesting for me.With time, short films from such protests as #protestkobiet (women’s protest) #czarnyprotest (black protest) or #BLM started to pop up on my phone, and they had 9,9B views! Young people started to use the funny application as a loudspeaker for important issues in the world today. I thought this might be an interesting tool to catch young peoples’ interest and direct it towards opera. This is how, together with artist Wanda Franek and Polish Opera Now, the first opera TikTok production was created.”
The post Wanda Franek TikTok 2 appeared first on Polish Opera Now.
]]>Wanda Franek: “Tik Tok is new and quite mysterious for me, it convinced me that I’m not so super young anymore:) I chose a little fragment of “Apollo et Hyacinthus”, the first opera written by W.A. Mozart. Mozart composed it when he was eleven years old and it’s really amazing how young people can be so creative and extraordinary. Would he be running his TikTok account if he lived right now? Let’s bring this genius teenager to life with TikTok! I’m proud I can lend my voice to him to do this:)”
Grzegorz Wełnicki: “My adventure with TikTok began simultaneously with the lockdown in Poland. I have spent a few days looking through the app, unfortunately most of the content was not interesting for me.With time, short films from such protests as #protestkobiet (women’s protest) #czarnyprotest (black protest) or #BLM started to pop up on my phone, and they had 9,9B views! Young people started to use the funny application as a loudspeaker for important issues in the world today. I thought this might be an interesting tool to catch young peoples’ interest and direct it towards opera. This is how, together with artist Wanda Franek and Polish Opera Now, the first opera TikTok production was created.”
The post Wanda Franek TikTok 1 appeared first on Polish Opera Now.
]]>“Oj radi radi rida!”
It’s in my nature from my youngest years
That I laugh at everything and that I still whistle at the world.
If sometimes it’s hard for me, or fate plays pranks on me
I don’t cry, I don’t sigh, but I laugh out loud:
Oj diridi, oj diridi, rach ciach ciach
Tomorrow poverty will be gone, rach ciach ciach
And once it is gone, rach ciach ciach
It will be better again, hop siup!
lyrics by Emanuel Schlechter and Konrad Tom
(translated by Barbara Zamek)
The post To Be Continued… appeared first on Polish Opera Now.
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