Moniuszko: Halka
Soloists
Teatr Wielki
Robert Satanowski
For my first trip to Eastern Europe for this part of the blog I am going to Poland and Moniuszko. Last year his opera Strasnzy Dwór (the Haunted Manor)was a major discovery and I acquired recordings of all of his operas.
https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Moniuszko
Halka is a more serious work than The Haunted Manor and is more typical of the nationalist operas which emerged from Eastern Europe during the middle of the 19th century. It has all the elements that one would expect = big choruses, folk dances, moments of light relief, impassioned arias and impressive ensembles. To my non-specialist ear it didn’t seem obviously Polish in character but certainly you could hear that this came from the same tradition as Russian and Czech opera. Perhaps there were a few moments of operatic cliché but generally the work had an immediacy which was very appealing. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing it - everything I have heard by this composer so far has been well worth listening to.
