When the Warsaw Chamber Opera founded its own ensemble of baroque instruments, it also created a festival of baroque music presenting works by various composers, a Claudio Monteverdi Festival and, several years later, a George Frederic Handel Festival.

 With the year 2009 proclaimed Handel Year, the previous year we added to the two Handel operas already in our repertoire – Rinaldo, the first of his operas to be staged in London, and Imeneo (the penultimate) – a work from the middle period of his London operatic productions: Giulio Cesare.

 We open the Second Handel Festival with a baroque work that is worthy of particular attention, as it will be the first stage performance of three Handel monodramas, fused into a single spectacle (an idea of Olga Pasichnyk’s), about three famous women from the distant past: La Lucrezia, Arminda abbandonata and Agrippina condotta a morire. Olga Pasichnyk will incarnate these three dramatic figures, accompanied by the dancers Izadora Weiss and Michał Łabuś. Izadora Weiss is also the director and choreographer, with stage design by Marlena Skoneczko. The chamber musicians performing the soloistic instrumental parts will be Maria Papuzińska-Uss (first baroque violin), Agnieszka Rychlik (second baroque violin), Jakub Kościukiewicz (baroque cello), Anton Birula (theorbo and lute) and Ewa Mrowca (harpsichord). The three monodramas are interleaved with two Handel trio sonatas: Op. 5 Nos. 3 and 6.

 Besides this new artistic experience, there will also be concerts: on 1 October, Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Music, performed by the Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense Early Instruments’ Ensemble of the Warsaw Chamber Opera directed by Władysław Kłosiewicz, in the Ballroom of the Royal Castle in Warsaw; on 15 December, the same programme at the Warsaw Chamber Opera Theatre; and to close the festival, on 19 December in the Castle Ballroom, a concert performance of Messiah, with the soloists Olga Pasichnyk, Anna Radziejewska, Sylwester Smulczyński and Jarosław Bręk, Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense and the Warsaw Chamber Opera Chorus directed by Władysław Kłosiewicz.

With baroque greetings,
  Stefan Sutkowski