D'ARC

ABOUT

D’ARC is a site-specific contemporary opera created for the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Conceived, directed, designed and written for the stage by Krystian Lada, the work unfolds across the Warsaw Rising Museum, Freedom Park and the surrounding architecture of Warsaw’s Wola district.

The audience does not watch the performance from a fixed auditorium. Divided into three groups and guided by Angels of History, they move between locations with headphones, encountering scenes that take place in Paris in 2024, Warsaw in 1944 and Rouen in 1429.

The opera brings together three women who exist in different historical realities: Joan, a contemporary Paris-based photographer and descendant of Polish emigrants; Joanna, a Warsaw cellist and insurgent; and Giovanna, Joan of Arc. Their stories meet in dreams, tracing questions of memory, inheritance, devotion and the forms of heroism that remain outside official historical narratives.

The libretto by Anka Herbut and Łukasz Barys draws on the diaries of artists who took part in the Warsaw Uprising and on the story of Joan of Arc. The music combines newly composed works by Dobrawa Czocher, Teoniki Rożynek, Wojciech Błażejczyk and Rafał Ryterski with works by Julius Eastman and Roman Padlewski.

Ryterski composed the music for the Paris and Rouen scenes. While the Paris scene is based on an original composition, the Rouen scene transforms musical material from Giuseppe Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco.

D’ARC was produced by the Warsaw Rising Museum in collaboration with Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera and premiered in Warsaw in August 2024.