My sixth Polish opera is a rarity: apparently it had never been performed since its debut until this Poznań Opera production, which was featured on Operavision. And now...I have seen it.
So there's a fisherman, Doman, who's in love with a woman, Bogna, but her father opposes the match; he wants her to marry an old mean rich guy, Lubor. But that's neither here nor there, since he won't let her marry period except in special circumstances: there's this legend--a Baltic legend, you might call it--that there was a town nearby, only the king's daughter rejected the love of the god Perun and threw a crown he'd given her into the sea. This made him unhappy, so he drowned the town beneath the waves. Apparently, the curse can only be lifted by retrieving the crown, though it was extremely unclear to me what the "curse" even is, or what lifting it would entail. The opera does not make this clear. Anyway, Bogda can only marry a guy who finds the crown. So Doman does that, and everything's cool. Also, there's a secondary couple, Svatava and Tomir, but as is often the case, their story is very much on the side. You could cut it out entirely without changing anything about the main narrative. Oh, and also--this amuses me--there's a statue of a goddess named "Dziedzilla." History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man, DZIEDZILLA!
Of this opera, operavision exhorts us to "discover a long-lost Polish gem, which shines like gold at the bottom of the Baltic Sea," which I can't help but feel may be overselling this a bit. The music occasionally recalls Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov in pleasant ways, but mostly it's pleasant but somewhat generic romantic stuff. The story, also, isn't much. The characters, at least in this production, never really reveal themselves as much of anything. The most interesting part is the second act which, aside from a brief chorus, is entirely wordless, with Doman under the sea searching for the crown. Otherwise...eh.
I'd been looking forward to seeing this one for a long time, but while there's a temptation to want to think that anything that's obscure must therefore be a lost gem, I...wouldn't say that's exactly the case here. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, but it's definitely the least of the Polish operas I've seen, and I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it to enter the standard repertoire.
Bafflingly, most of the Google Image results for "Dziedzilla" are what appears to be some kind of skincare product. Specify "Dziedzilla goddess", and you'll start getting some English-language results, but half of them are about The Baltic Legend and the rest are about Chopin.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a job for somebody from Poland!
ReplyDeleteYhe, pretty much the problem with our local mythology is that - unlike let's say Greek - a lot of early Slavic religion gone forgotten to time and there is plenty of obscure gods and spirits about whom all we know is that :
a) People use to worship
b) They had a name
c) That's pretty much it
What complicated things is that the biggest documentation of pegan belives in the middle ages was chronicled by historian Jan Długosz... and a lot of modern historian say that panteon of gods he described appeared to be Długosz own invention, resulting in poor research mixed with his own liberties, often creating pararells with Roman and Greek gods, which made zero sense...and sadly his version floated around for centuriues confusing people.
Then again there are some characters like Lel and Polel, who where twin-brothers figures from slavic belives who Długos in his writing upgrated to gods, while current historical research had zero evidance for that, in fact it seams that they where more likley fool archetypes... HOWEVER there was at least one discovery of slavic idols depicting two twin-characters so perhaps Długos was on to some something.
I did heared from a historian friend of mine to be cerfull with information about Slavic religion as acording to him a lot of what's floating around is often base on modern interpretation and imagiantion (fan-fiction if you will) and in some cases it reflects Slavic belives as well as Disney "Hercules" represents ancient greek religion... which acording to him also includes current neo-pegan Slavic cults in Poland, which apperently has very little base in tradtion, but I don't want to sound like I'm bashing ones religion.
...With all this introduction "Dziedzilla" you mention, seams to be "Dzidzileyla", which was one of godesess that Długosz invented HOWEVER some historians think this was ment to be the actual worship godess Perperuna (or Dodola) and Długosz was just missinform about the name and was godess of rain
P.S.
Also screw "The Witcher"! I mean, I'm freaking proud that something from Poland made a name for itself like that and while I only read few of the Sapkowski's stories I did like the show and If it make people more intrest in things from Polish pop-culture I'm all for it... BUT MAAAAAAAAAAAAN! Did that first episode piss-me off. Kikimora is - in slavic belives - this imp-like house spirit, that should look more like female version of Dobby from "Harry Potter" (and have forns) THAT'S A KIKIMORA! In this series? It's a freaking gigatic spider! That's lives in a swamp... Whaaaa? And what's more depressing was to learn that apperently it's this way this book. Look, I get that Witcher universe only takes elements from slavic folclor but wow, first creature from our traditions in a American show and they butcher it like that. It's like if greek mythology was never used in big production television and is widly unkonw and we going to see a CENTAUR for the first time and... it's a gigantic cat with wings. Not even a horse with wing where at very least I can say "Welp, they confuse the two but at least they got it's a horse-related". Here? Zero resembplance of any kind!
I... Um... Yhe, our folclor needs a better PR in the western world.
I must say, your English spelling really goes to hell when you get worked up. :)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, thanks for that lesson. It's really interesting, and also a little dispiriting, that the past can get so distorted.
ReplyDeleteYhe, sorry about the typos. I'm use to Polish phonetics so I often make errors in English automatically and I keep forgetting you have diffrent rules... and in some cases I just made a mistake and didn't notice when rereading it ("HORNS" not "forns") I usualy put the text into Responsive voice first and check for spelling typos... here I did the mistake of doing this AFTER I post the post.