The Haunted Manor

Stanislaw Moniuszko : Strasny dwor (The Haunted Manor)

Conductor: David Jones

Director: Michal Znaniecki

Designer: Francesco Calcagnini

First performance: Wielki Theatre, Warsaw, September 28th 1865

High jinks in a haunted house in the depths of rural Poland: it might not sound like a barrel of laughs, but Strasny dwor is just that - a comic opera which has been praised for its "finely constructed ensembles, colourful instrumentation and melodic inventiveness", not to mention polkas, mazurkas and polonaises galore.

Though hardly a household name in western Europe, Moniuszko is revered at home as the creator of Polish national opera and placed second only to Chopin in the Polish 19th-century pantheon, with his best-known operas, Halka and Strasny dwor, remaining happily ensconced in the repertoire of Polish opera houses.

The Haunted Manor opens with the victorious return to Poland of two soldier brothers who, in a moment of emotional weakness, have sworn never to marry, but always to be at the ready to defend the fatherland. On a visit to the country manor of their old friend Miecznik they encounter, not the rumoured ghost, but the two lovely daughters of the house, and are immediately smitten - to the annoyance of a cantankerous aunt and a spurned ex-boyfriend of one of the girls.

Knowing that Miecznik values bravery above all else in a prospective son-in-law, the pair plot to discredit the lads by arranging for a few things to go bump in the night, but the fearless pair expose the charade, woo the girls and live happily ever after. The fatherland's loss is fatherhood's gain.

Michal Znaniecki is from Warsaw; after graduating from the Polish Academy of Dramatic Arts, he worked as a director and playwright at some of Poland's most important theatres - Warsaw's National Theatre and the Polish Theatre in Poznan - before extending his experience to Germany and Italy where, after working at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan and the Teatro Comunale, Bologna he recently directed Haydn's L'Isola disabitata at the Teatro Sociale in Como.

`Strasny Dwor is very, very popular and the Polish people treat it as a national opera of our country, even though it's an opera buffa - every theatre in Poland has it in the repertory. Of course we also have Halka, another opera by Moniuszko, which is on a serious topic and which is perhaps more suitable as a national monument. Moniuszko used a lot of traditional folkloric motifs for Strasny dwor because, of course, when he was writing it in the 1860s, the talk was of Poland and Poland and Poland - which was very, very important at the end of the century. But now I think it has become too weighed down by tradition - it's very nice for foreigners, let's say, but for young people in Poland it's just too much Polishness.

"Within the opera there is a conflict of cultures; it is the soldiers who are fighting for the tradition of Poland against the new fashions which are being introduced by newcomers from the west. At least that has been the way Polish directors have tended to interpret this opera, talking about honour, the Polish flag, the values of the Polish people and so on - and I think it's a good way to kill the opera, actually.

"Because it's a really, really funny opera - I've been calling it Cosi Fan Tutte here at Wexford - and the way I interpret it, it's a story about love, about young people who want to be free, not to have wives and families, but then they fall in love and everything changes. And this is really interesting for me, not to have to do the opera the way I would in Poland!

"In Poland the critics would murder me if I did it like this, without a Polish house, Polish flowers, Polish costumes . . . but for me it's important to find an international way to approach the piece. Like Moniuszko himself did in Paris, when they said to him, `no, it's too Polish, we can't understand it' - and he wanted to cut out the Polish elements and leave a dramatic situation similar to that in Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost.

"So that's what I want to do; to present a very open-minded production. It will be traditional, of course, in that it won't be one of those anti-traditional modernist productions in outlandish costumes - but I want people to listen to the music so that we can discover it together in a way that would be impossible in Poland."