Review: JULIETTA at Wrocław Opera

What can you do with a 90-year-old piece about a man madly in love, slowly slipping into a dream he has no desire to wake up from? Quite a lot, it turns out.

It's colorful, tasteful, slightly freaky - and still undeniably magical. There are no boundaries here, no limits. I have the impression that director Barbara Wiśniewska simply flew out the window and never looked back. You can feel she has been waiting to stage this piece for a long time - the vision is clear, bold, and confidently leads the rhythm, the imagery, and the entire experience like a steady hand on the wheel. She squeezes the story like a lemon, and somewhere between crocodiles, a man crazy in love, chair-monsters, and a three-person crab, a philosophical question quietly appears: what matters more - past or future, reality or dream? What is worth following?

It's like Hitchcock wandered into a fairytale and accidentally met Twin Peaks… on a beach. We land in a half-forgotten town where people cannot remember their past. Ten minutes of memory - would that complicate life, or make it easier?

A huge credit goes to the visual team (they are like this three-person crab to me!): scenography by Natalia Kitamikado, costumes by Emil Wysocki, and set design by Aleksandr Prowaliński. Together, they build a world that is modern, playful, and deliciously strange. Their imaginations merge into one coherent flow of images - surprising, precise, and so hard to resist. And the moment when the stage lifts to reveal what has been hidden underneath the whole time? I audibly gasped. So did the person next to me.

The cast delivers beautifully. Their voices cut through the space and float above the audience like free birds. Maciej Kwaśnikowski as Michel carries a fearless naivety that pulls you in (plus his French is deliciously good!), while Kamila Dutkowska as Juliette brings a kind of fragile, elusive mystery that is dangerously easy to fall for. The ensemble works wonderfully, and the choir - so present, so alive - is like candy after a year on a sugar-free diet.

And then there's the music. I'll be honest — I didn't know Martinů before that evening. Now I can't stop thinking about his score. Slightly wild, slightly off-center, with echoes of Stravinsky. It's something you don't just hear. You mumble it on the way home.

Vibrant, weird, funny - and absolutely worth seeing. This production at Opera Wrocławska is a gentle but firm reminder that "old" opera can still feel completely fresh, surprising, and alive.

Photo: Karpati&Zarewicz