"The opera is going to start in a few minutes' time," the woman at the entrance of the Polish Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition announces, and your mind instantly conjures up grand theatres, opera singers in opulent costumes and awe-inspiring sets. Yet the performance awaiting for you inside the pavilion is very different from the operas you may see in proper theatres and that's why even people who do not like the genre will feel attracted to it.
"Halka/Haiti 18°48'05"N 72°23'01"W" - the project deviced for the Polish Pavilion by C.T. Jasper and Joanna Malinowska - consists indeed in a panoramic film projection of the opera "Halka" by Stanisław Moniuszko (premiered in Warsaw in 1858), staged in February 2015 on a road between several houses, for the inhabitants of Cazale.
This village located in the mountains of Haiti (as indicated by the coordinates in the pavilion's title) has strong links with Poland. Cazale is populated by the descendants of Polish soldiers who - sent to Saint-Domingue by Napoleon in 1802 and 1803 to put down the slaves' rebellion - ended up uniting with the local insurgents. The soldiers were therefore granted an honorary legal status of blacks in the newly established republic.
The main inspiration for this project was Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, with the main character dreaming of building an opera house in Iquitos, but this unique staging of "Halka" can't be really accused of exploiting the locals.
Five soloists, members of the Poznan Opera House, and twenty-one musicians from the Holy Trinity Philharmonic Orchestra from Port-au-Prince led by the conductor of the Poznan Opera House, provide voices and music, but the project is not just about music and images, since it tackles a wide range of themes, including migration, transplantation and cultural colonisation.
Halka's tragic story of seduction, rejection and sacrifice combines with the echoes of the 1846 peasant revolt and hints at the class relations between Polish landlords and their feudal subjects. This Polish opera becomes therefore a piece with political, historical and anthropological connotations, that also makes people ponder about the silencing of the Haitian Revolution.
As visitors watch a Polish national opera taking place in the Haitian tropics, they instantly question the genuine efforts of cultural promotion, but they realise the performance has a universal geographic, historical and sociopolitical power.
The project could be considered as a collaborative process since it engaged the local community as well, with eighteen dancers from Cazale joining the workshops, and local men working as translators.
This cinematic installation curated by art historian and critic Magdalena Moskalewicz, will transform Poland's national pavilion into a Haitian village for the duration of the Biennale, but it will hopefully be touring not just museums but selected dcinemas as well, reminding new audiences that opera can be used to embody, represent, and, question many issues of modern society and can take place everywhere and not just in grand theatres for an audience of wealthy people in designer clothes.
Image credits for this post
All images in this post: C.T. Jasper, Joanna Malinowska, "Halka/Haiti. 18°48'05"N 72°23'01"W", 2015. Soloists from the Stanisław Moniuszko Grand Theatre in Poznań, the St. Trinity Philharmonic Orchestra from Port-au-Prince and dancers from Cazale during the performance. Cazale, Haiti, 7th February, 2015. Photos: Bartosz Górka.
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