Adrift on an aria d'amore

Four years after Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda was staged on the Oder river in Wrocław, Ewa Michnik, director of the Wrocław Opera, is presenting Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore on the water at Wrocław's Pergola. The premiere is planned for June 15 and the mega-production - to be performed for for an audience of up to 3,000 - will usher in the Opera's Summer Festival.

"We are planning to launch it with Donizetti's L'elisir d'Amore directed by Michał Znaniecki. Next year we want to stage Verdi's Otello and then Ponchielli's La Gioconda in 2009," says Michnik.

The first production will be directed by Michał Znaniecki, who recently worked with Placido Domingo on Cyrano de Bergerac in Spain. He will now use the natural assets of Wrocław's Pergola and set the opera in a fishing village. The performers will use footbridges and rafts to move from one place to another.

"The opera starts in a village. The villagers will stand in the shallow water and plant rice. In the middle we will build a large shell - a sail - which refers to the tradition of classic theaters on water. It will be transparent and will often change its location and color," says Znaniecki. "Dulcamara's entrance is one of the most important moments in the two-act comic opera. The composer has left the coordination of it to us. Therefore [he] can arrive on horseback, by carriage, ship, or even - in more modern productions - by car. Having a large space like the Pergola, we will have Dulcamara, the seller of miracles, arrive by balloon," boasts Znaniecki.