As a Polish composer of the 19th century, Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819-1872) has been completely overshadowed on the international scene by the great figure of Chopin. By his fellow countrymen he is cherished as the father of Polish opera, and for his large legacy of songs. Straszny dwor The Haunted Manor, first produced in 1865, was written in a cheerful mode to revive Polish spirits at a time when a failed insurrection had provoked an intensification of Tsarist oppression. The work's strong national sentiments were buried in a story set in the past, but not disguised thoroughly enough to escape the attention of the censor. After just three performances Straszny dwor was banned. It wasn't heard again during the composer's lifetime and wasn't revived in Warsaw until 1914.
The haunted manor of the title is the home of two sisters whose fortunes have been predicted as being to marry military men. And it's at home that they meet two soldiering brothers who have returned from the wars of 1750 and have sworn to serve their country rather than marry. An aunt who has other brides in mind, and a dandified suitor of one of the sisters, plan to upset the apparently inevitable but don't succeed.
The music is light, tuneful, and often heavily imbued with the spirit of Polish dances. The Wexford Festival production team, director Michal Znaniecki, designer Francesco Calcagnini and costume consultant Dalia Gallico, opted for a lively and colourful treatment. The aunt becomes a sort of stage tart, the sword-bearer Miecznik, father of the two girls, a figure of fun, turning up at one point wearing a ceremonial decoration over a night-gown. One of the girls, Jadwiga, appears on stage in a large, wooden, foamy bath (but wearing a black thong).
The important nationalist constituents are always likely to be difficult for a non-Pole to unravel in this work. Presented as at Wexford, they become submerged in a sea of froth. David Jones's conducting of the NSO didn't always have the requisite tightness and snap. The singer who most clearly won the audiences' hearts was Iwona Hossa, whose handling of Hanna's coloratura aria commanded strongest attention. The thin, penetrating tenor of Dariusz Stachura (Stefan) and the mellifluously round bass of Jacek Janiszewski (Zbigniew) made anicely contrasted pair as the brothers. Elizabeth Woods cavorted nimbly as the aunt, Czesnikowa, and Piotr Nowacki (Skoluba) was an able, comic scene-setter for the "haunting" of Act III.
Yet, for all the liveliness of presentation, this was an evening which somehow amounted to less than the sum of its parts.
