Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny has unveiled his plans for the inaugural Baltic Opera Festival in July. The renowned Wagnerian and star of the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Vienna State Opera and the Bayreuth Festival talks to Limelight about the ambitious project, which he hopes will soon get its space alongside the festivals in Salzburg, Bregenz and Aix-en-Provence.
During the interwar period, the annual Wagner Festival in Sopot, Poland, became a mainstay of the European cultural calendar. Its monumental, outdoor productions drew audiences distant and wide. In one thousand nine hundred thirty-sixth, it broke records when over 30.000 people filled the bleachers. But the festival faded into obscurity after World War II. Its purpose-built, open-air amphitheatre – the Forest Opera – became the venue for propaganda concerts of the communist state, as well as the annual Sopot Music Festival, which attracted artists both sides of the Iron Curtain in a celebration of population music. Now, with Konieczny as artistic director, opera will once again get centre stage.
Does he hope to restore the Wagnerian credentials of Sopot, which once saw the spa town dubbed the ‘Bayreuth of the North’? “That came about beca one thousand nine hundred twenty-two onwards, the organisers only programmed Wagner. That said, it could never really compete with Bayreuth which presented eight canonical Wagnerian operas over the course of each festival, with performances daily,” Konieczny says.
“Here, there was just one, or two at most. However, they were always beautifully presented. The organisers made perfect of the natural surrounds, with performers appearing through the trees as they took to the stage in the naturally formed amphitheatre.” “In a sense, we're restoring that tradition, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to only carry out Wagner. Following year, for example, we're looking to program works that'll enable us to be engaged in stars Poland and around the world, and their repertoire will define which titles we can choose .”
