The best city in the world. Opera about Warsaw

Opera in 16 ScenesLibretto: Beniamin M. Bukowski based on Grzegorz Piątek's book The Best City in the World. Warsaw under Reconstruction 1944-1949 Premiere: 19/09/2025, Teatr Wielki - National OperaProducer: Sinfonia VarsoviaOriginal Polish language version with Polish and English subtitles

The opera was commissioned by Sinfonia Varsovia thanks to the financial support of the City of Warsaw.

Smoke, flashing lights and flare effects were used in the performance

The photo of Warsaw residents returning to the ruins of their city in 1945 and photographing themselves against the background of the material with a painted idyllic landscape is very impressive. This picture appears in the opera The Best City of the World by Cezary Duchnowski. This performance is an erudite fresco, operating with quotations, but not overwhelming. It is a confession of love for the survival power of the inhabitants of Warsaw. He recounts the tragedy of the city and its rise from rubble in a delightfully communal way. The artists, led by the sensitive and wise director Barbara Wiśniewska, paint a story about the city as an organism, a social phenomenon with movement, image and music. Natalia Kitamikado's scenography and Maciek Prusak's choreography create a poignant but elegantly metaphorical picture. The tragedies of the capital are shown subtly, without sensationalism and suffering.

The libretto was based on Grzegorz Piątek's penetrating book The Best City in the World. Warsaw under reconstruction 1944—1949. Librettist Beniamin Bukowski created a story that draws on sources from the era: political speeches, technical jargon of urban planning, and the colloquial language of the street. However, this is not a historical chronicle, but a story about the intertwining of complex human destinies. The protagonists are two women: a modernist architect modeled after Helena Sirkus, who works in the Office for the Reconstruction of the Capital, whose pre-war dreams of rebuilding a dysfunctional city are transformed into a macabre reality, and an American journalist who features the features of Anne Louise Strong, a reporter fascinated by communism, traveling with the Red Army through war-torn Poland. Their meeting will lead to the fact that both will have to revise their worldview.

The music for the performance was created by composer Cezary Duchnowski. The piece combines orchestral momentum with modern electronics, solo parts with choral ones, thanks to which it will be possible to tell both about the enormity of the tragedy of the city and the individual perspectives of its inhabitants. For director Barbara Wiśniewska from Warsaw, the opera has a personal dimension, as it is a story in which the fate of her family is also reflected. At the same time, she is interested in the broad material and social dimension of the destruction and reconstruction of Warsaw — a traumatic experience that is passed on to subsequent generations, which, thanks to determination, has been transformed into a joint effort that is an example of an unprecedented uprising from the rubble of the city razed to the ground.

It is the best commemoration of the reconstruction of the Teatr Wielki - the National Opera in 1965, and at the same time an excellent medium for telling Polish history to Europe and the world.

Choir of the Grand Theatre - National OperasSinfonia VarsoviWładysław Skoraczewski Children's Choir “Artos”