Marcelina Sembrich-Kochańska in memoriam (Międzynarodowy Dzień Muzyki) by Various, sun 01 okt 2017, Frá (2017/2017), Hljómsveitarstjóri Adam Banaszak, Opera Wrocławska, Wrocław, Poland

"No singer has so far succeeded in winning recognition from the New York audience more easily than Madame Sembrich. It seemed that from the very first note she had gained the recognition of the audience, and before the curtain fell after the first act, the triumph of the new prima donna was complete. The voice of our new favorite is especially clean and full; it is wonderful as if she reaches the highest tones of her party quite easily ... " Marcelina Sembrich-Kochańska, next to the Reszek siblings, belonged to a very small group of Polish artists who reached the heights in the world of pre-war opera. The Polish singer triumphed on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera, being her prima donna for eleven seasons. She gave concerts in Wrocław several times in the 1880s and 1890s; The Wrocław Opera was also on the map of her recitals in former Breslau. Today, exactly 130 years after the first Wrocław concert of Marcelina Sembrich-Kochańska, we meet in the same place. The program of the gala opera gala will include items that this artist had in her repertoire - arias from operas by such bel cant masters as Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti or Gioacchino Rossini (Norma, Puritans, Lucia di Lammermoor, Semiramida), or the king of the Italian opera of the nineteenth century, Giuseppe Verdi (Traviata, Rigoletto, Ernani). During the concert, contemporary masters of color, three sopranos for whom the tradition of Marcelina Sembrich-Kochańska is a point of individual reference, and an important moment in the history of Polish successes on foreign opera stages, will present themselves.