Manru was staged at the Opéra National de Lorraine in the French city of Nancy in May.
The performance was conducted by Poland’s Marta Gardolińska, who has served as the company’s music director for the past two years.
Gardolińska wrote on Facebook: “It's hard to describe how proud and happy I am with this achievement. When emigrating from Poland I have set myself a goal of helping brilliant Polish music back into the international scene where it belongs. When these efforts bring such a fruit my heart is full. I hope that now Manru is closer to reappearing on world opera stages regularly.”
The performance, directed by Katharina Kastening, was a co-production with Germany’s Bühnen Halle.
It will be rebroadcast by France Musique on July 1 at 8 p.m. in the programme Samedi à l'Opéra.
The work is sung in German, the original language of the opera.
The libretto, by Alfred Nossig, is based on Chata za wsią (The Cabin Behind the Wood), a novel by Polish writer Ignacy Jan Kraszewski. The opera exploits the frequent motif of a love potion to tell the story of a marriage doomed to end tragically.
Manru was Paderewski’s only opera. It premiered in Dresden in 1901. The performance provoked enormous interest from both critics and audiences.
In later years, Manru was performed across Europe and in America, including in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and New York.
The work remains to this day the only Polish opera ever produced at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
Next season Gardolińska is set to continue her efforts to promote Polish music in France. The programme of the orchestra of the Opéra National de Lorraine features the Second Violin Concerto by 19th-century Polish composer Henryk Wieniawski, with Japan’s Hina Maeda, the winner of the 2022 International Wieniawski Competition in Poland, as the soloist.
(mk/gs)