Manru

The bird loves his little nest,
He cries when he is forced to wander.
Have you no heart ?
Doesn't separation sadden you ?
Tell me, I beg you, why do you wander ?
Has rest no charm for you ?
Manru

Because she has fallen in love with the gypsy Manru, young Ulana is repudiated by her mother and rejected by her village. But Ulana and Manru's love will have to face many other pitfalls: it will have to resist the call of the nomadic life which is stronger than anything and which threatens their family tranquillity... This story of impossible and universal love, between two individuals from hostile communities, has sometimes earned Manru the label of "Polish Carmen".

The composer, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, had an exceptional destiny: a virtuoso who was one of the greatest pianists of his time, he moved to the United States for a time before returning to Poland after the First World War, taking over the government in a country undergoing reconstruction.

Manru, his only opera, was premiered in Dresden in 1901 before, the following year, the Metropolitan Opera opened the way to international recognition in New York. Outside Poland, the work subsequently suffered a long and unjust eclipse, before slowly but surely returning to the operatic stage.

This new production - co-produced by the Halle Opera - presents, for the first time in 120 years, the work in German, the original language of its creation. The young director Katharina Kastening sees Manru as a ruthlessly lucid drama about the failure of utopias and the end of the great romantic ideas in a society plagued by hatred. She poses the unfortunately highly topical question of the origins of hatred between peoples.