In addition to members of the Polish National Ballet, the event featured top soloists from some of Europe’s leading companies, including Bleuenn Battistoni and Paul Marque from the Paris Opera Ballet; Mayara Magri and Matthew Ball from the Royal Ballet in London, and Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko from the Ballet Company of Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
The programme comprised showcase numbers from such ballets as Giselle, La Bayadere, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote, The Sleeping Beauty, some of them in the classical choreography of Kenneth MacMillan, Rudolf Nureyev, and George Balanchine.
The Polish National Opera Orchestra was conducted by Israeli-American conductor Yoel Gamzou, the company’s new music director.
The ballet gala is repeated on Sunday.
The first opera premiere of the 2026/2027 season, scheduled for October 16, is The Mothers of Kherson by Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, with a libretto by George Brant. Inspired by the real stories, the work is a tribute to the Ukrainian women who are fighting to rescue their children forcibly detained by Russian authorities.
The Mothers of Kherson is the Polish National Opera’s co-production with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, with Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson as its music director.
The season’s highlights include Richard Strauss’ Salome (a co-production with Teatro Real in Madrid), Leoš Janáček’s Katya Kabanowa, Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers (a co-production with Wiener Staatsoper), and Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann (a co-production with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin.
(mk/pu)
Source: IAR, Polish National Opera