Premiere: 13.09.2019 – Opera i Filharmonia Podlaska w Białymstoku
Music management: Bassem Akiki
Directing and staging: Maria Sartova
Scenography and animations: Damian Styrna
Choreography: Kasia Zielonka i Jarosław Staniek
Costumes: Anna Chadaj
Multimedia: Eliasz Styrna
Director of the lights: Maciej Igielski

The Gypsy Baron and the splendour of the Podlasie Opera House

Maria Sartova has placed in a slightly fanciful space a simple love story and dreams, in search of a hidden treasure and against a backdrop of past and future war.  Through a personal approach of the Gypsy Baron, she has succeeded in building a timeless narrative where conflicts explode between Hungarians and Gypsies who nevertheless live on a common land.  They argue, sometimes a neighbour steals from another neighbour and the fiancée makes her lover cuckold. Still, it’s always the triumph of love!

The director plays with apparently conventional sets reproducing old castles in Austria, military medals which, through contemporary cinema and social networks, lose their outdated and obsolete character and thus acquire a new identity. Thus the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the 19th century faded away and gave way to the fairy tale which joined the principles of tolerance of a universal world.

The distribution is flawless. The artists evolve in a very contemporary scenography. It is based on cinematographic references, bilboards, and, in general, on the springs of pop culture while respecting the codes and content of the operetta. Congratulations to the two set designers, Damian and Eliasz Styrna! Anna Chadej’s costumes make it a real delight for our eyes, as they reflect the richness of different worlds. Thus playful Gypsies with their fairy tale of colours rub shoulders with peasants with pale faces or carved by the sun, vigorous soldiers, all dressed in green, and new rich ones, pig breeders, all in pink!