In September, SCENA Theatre, a European – style repertory company, founded in 1987 in Washington, DC opened its 2004/05 season with the production of one of the most popular works by Witold Gombrowicz: “Ivona, The Princess of Burgundia”. The opening production, staged by SCENA’s artistic director Robert McNamara, celebrates the 100th birthday of the Polish master playwright and novelist. Following its Washington debut, “Ivona” highly prized by the local audience and critics, will travel to the 2004 Gombrowicz Festival in Lublin, Poland.
On September 10, 2004 at the Polish Embassy Jan Matejko’s drawings were handed over to Ambassador Przemysław Grudziński to be shipped to Jan Matejko’s Museum in Kraków. 11 drawings and “Black Madonna” (a painting on an ivory) went to Poland according to the will of late Professor Jerzy Nowiński, the husband of Maria Kirchmayer, granddaughter of famous Polish painter. Among 11 drawings are outlines to a well known painting “The Battle of Grunwald”. Dr Bryan Cheeseman who was a student of Professor Nowiński as an executor of the will passed on the drawings to the Ambassador.
Andrea Chenier, a famous opera by Umberto Giordano, directed by Mariusz Treliński opened the 2004-05 season of the Washington National Opera. Acclaimed Polish director explained that the idea to stage this particular opera about the French Revolution attracted him because it brings a timeless theme of an individual who is trapped by violence and suffering and can win only by achieving internal freedom. You can do anything to a man. You can physically imprison him, torture him or kill him. But you can never take away his internal freedom – and that is precisely what constitutes his humanity, his pride and his strength. It is love, the highest of feelings, unselfish and pure, that brings salvation to the poet Andrea Chenier… Chenier has become a myth and the poet a symbol of all those who saved their pride until the end. Reviewing the production Tim Page on the pages of “The Washington Post” wrote that Treliński approached “Chenier” as an eternal, multi-culti parable, and threw in references to everything from the Russian revolutionary films of Sergei Eisenstein to Broadway’s “Les Miserables”. Andrea Chenier has been the second production made by Mariusz Treliński and his team from Poznań’s Teatr Wielki in Washington. Season 2001-02 of the Washington National Opera was opened by Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. That production, as well as, Andrea Chenier were very well received by Washingtonian audience.
