Fabio Biondi, together with Europa Galante and soloists Tina Gorina, Monika Ledzion-Porczyńska and Matheus Pompeu, presents the world premiere recording on period instruments of Moniuszko’s opera, Halka. Biondi recorded the 1857 Italian version of the opera in a concert performance which took place during the 14th International Music Festival ‘Chopin and his Europe’ in Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of Polish Radio, Warsaw, in August 2018.

Fabio Biondi, who with his ensemble Europa Galante has become renowned for interpretations of Baroque music, has been shifting his interests for the last decade or so towards early Romantic opera. In Warsaw, at the ‘Chopin and his Europe’ festival, he has presented concert versions of operas by Bellini (Norma, I Capuleti e i Montecchi), the original version of Verdi’s Macbeth and, in 2018, Halka, in its Italian version. Of course, he could not show the despairing girl’s fiery torch or her salto mortale, but the music in his interpretation gained all the more force of expression. Biondi’s recording of the Italian version of Halka situates it among the finest operatic works of European romanticism.

He admits to having discovered an exceptional composer: “The passion that engulfed me for the music of the great Stanislaw Moniuszko was not by chance. In the Europe of the first half of the nineteenth century, filled with the operatic element, under the powerful sway of the phenomenon of Giuseppe Verdi, we are enchanted by the language which the great Polish master succeeded in personalising in such an exceptional, distinctive way. In his scores, we find wonderful lyricism and splendid instrumentation, referring with deference to the great German symphonists, and at the same time to Italian simplicity. Above all, however, we discover the wonderfully mined potential of popular Polish music of those times. This all means that Moniuszko is a composer to whom one cannot but refer with great enthusiasm, if one wishes to better understand the phenomenon of nineteenth-century European music.” – Fabio Biondi, October, 2018


Cast:
- Halka: Tina Gorina
- Zofia (Sofia): Monika Ledzion-Porczyńska
- Jontek: Matheus Pompeu
- Janusz (Gianni): Robert Gierlach
- Stolnik (Alberto): Rafał Siwek
- Young man: Karol Kozłowski