This Saturday, 20 May, will be the 14th time that museums, galleries and cultural organisations across Poland open their doors to middle-of-the-night visitors. Those who decide to pop round to the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera will have a chance to see the opera house’s new sartorial exhibition Theatre: It’s On Our Heads, displaying hats, masks, wigs, wreaths and many more works of millinery art devised by well-known designers and brought to life by the Wielki's craftsmen and women. The exhibition of theatre headdresses will be open from 7 pm on Saturday until 1 am on Sunday. Admission is free. Please use the left wing entrance to the opera house. (A tent may partly obstruct the door.)
More attractions will be awaiting a short walk away from the opera house, on the courtyard of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. At 9:30 pm an animated film on the history of the Warsaw opera house, Być Wielkim (Wielki Means Great), will be shown on a big screen there. Next, the Złoty Suwak ensemble made up of the Wielki’s orchestra members will give a concert featuring such pieces as A. Garfunkel’s Scarborough fair or H. Mancini’s Pink Panther; members of the Opera Academy will sing, mong other pieces, Nemorino’s aria from Donizetti’s L’elisir d'amore, Musette’s aria from Puccini’s La bohème, Ruggiero’s aria from Handel’s Alcina; while Mediachoir, an ensemble founded by members of the Wielki's chorus, will perform the waltz from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Va, pensiero from Verdi’s Nabucco and other popular pieces.
Inside a tent set up on the ministry’s courtyard will hold ballet lessons every half an hour from 7:30 to 9:30 pm.
Come and join in the fun!
Pictured: a fragment of the exhibition Theatre: It’s On Our Heads (Donat Brykczyński / BEW)