"The Merry Widow" Filharmonia Narodowa

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"The Merry Widow"
Łukasz Borowicz, photo: Ksawery Zamoyski

Every year, the Warsaw Philharmonic invites listeners to spend New Year’s Eve in the company of music. This year, the orchestra led by Łukasz Borowicz, alongside outstanding soloists, will be performing in full one of the most celebrated operettas in the history of the genre. Ferenc Lehar’s The Merry Widow was first staged in Vienna towards the end of 1905. The history of the work’s composition is so colourful and dramatic that it could be used as the plot for another operetta. The name of the composer – whose music contributed to the extraordinary success of The Merry Widow, performed in its original production almost 500 times – ultimately eclipsed the names of the librettists and the initiators of the project. Lehar was the second composer asked to write the music for this operetta, and towards the end of his work, he was on the point of being dismissed. Until the very last minute, doubts remained as to whether the work would prove a success; the budget and number of rehearsals were reduced to a minimum, and the costs of preparing the costumes and sets were covered partly by the performers themselves. In addition, there was a whiff of diplomatic scandal in the air, and the librettists decided to cover up the source of their not entirely original – as it turned out – idea.

Bartłomiej Gembicki

 

* Opera Academy at Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw
** soloists of the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir

Warsaw Philharmonic Patron of the Year – PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna – warmly welcomes you to join us in this concert
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Izabela Matuła

Graduated with distinction from the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow (2009) and represented Poland at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2009. Her first operatic roles were Gabrielle in Penderecki’s The Devils of Loudun, Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust and Micaёla in Carmen with the Krakow Opera. From 2012 to 2018, Izabela Matula was engaged at Theater Krefeld and Mönchengladbach, performing roles such as Ellen Orford in Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, Amelia in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera and the title parts in Giacomo Puccini Suor Angelica and Leoš Janáček Káťa Kabanova. Her repertoire includes roles such as Contessa Almaviva (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro), Amelia (Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera), Mimì (Puccini’s La bohème), main roles in Puccini's Tosca, Antonia (Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d'Hoffmann), Elsa (Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin), Leonora (Verdi’s Il trovatore), Die Tochter (Paul Hindemith’s Cardillac), Madame Butterfly (Puccini’s), Wally (Alfred Catalani’s La Wally). Guest appearances have taken Izabela Matula to Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw (as Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello, Leonora in Verdi’s La forza del destino and as Halka in Stanisław Moniuszko’s opera), to Bergen (as Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi), to Bilbao (as Mimì) and to Palermo (as Dorotka in Jaromír Weinberger’s Švanda dudák), as well to the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Theater an der Wien, Landestheater Linz, Theater Dortmund, Oper Frankfurt and opera houses in Nuremberg, Braunschweig, Darmstadt and Düsseldorf.

She is also internationally successful as a concert singer whose numerous recordings attest to her wide-ranging output. Her repertoire ranges from Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven to Gustav Mahler, Dmitri Shostakovich and especially the works of Krzysztof Penderecki.
 

[2023]