Polish Royal Opera - Aleksander i Apelles - Karol Kurpiński - 10 March 2018

It is always of great interest in life to stumble over a rare, normally inaccessible and forgotten work of art. An apple on the moon. In this case it was a small chamber opera by the eminent Polish composer Karol Kazimierz Kurpiński (1785-1857) that had not been performed in repertory for some two hundred years.
Outside of his native land, his name would certainly only be known to a few specialist musicologists in western countries despite being the most prominent Polish composer before Fryderyk Chopin. Born in Włoszakowice, a small villagein west-central Poland, some sixty kilometers from Poznań, he was the son of the local organist and the daughter of a village civil servant. From 1800 to 1808 he played the violin in the orchestra of Count Feliks Polanowski at his seat near Lwów. Later in 1810 he held the post of assistant conductor until 1824 at the National Theater in Warsaw alongside Josef Elsner, Fryderyk Chopin's teacher and also an opera composer of note. At that time he …
Outside of his native land, his name would certainly only be known to a few specialist musicologists in western countries despite being the most prominent Polish composer before Fryderyk Chopin. Born in Włoszakowice, a small villagein west-central Poland, some sixty kilometers from Poznań, he was the son of the local organist and the daughter of a village civil servant. From 1800 to 1808 he played the violin in the orchestra of Count Feliks Polanowski at his seat near Lwów. Later in 1810 he held the post of assistant conductor until 1824 at the National Theater in Warsaw alongside Josef Elsner, Fryderyk Chopin's teacher and also an opera composer of note. At that time he …