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FULL DŹWIĘKOKSIĘŻNIK or SOUND BOOK (Chmielewska) 2025 Krzysztof Ratajski, Ambroży Golachowski, Natalia Jarosiewicz, Małgorzata Romańska-Zwierz
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: DŹWIĘKOKSIĘŻNIK or SOUND BOOK
- Composer: Chmielewska Aleksandra
- Libretto: Aleksandra Chmielewska Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Hashtag Labs, Warsaw, Poland
- Recorded: October 2025
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Krzysztof Ratajski, Ambroży Golachowski, Natalia Jarosiewicz, Małgorzata Romańska-Zwierz
- Conductor:
- Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble
- Stage Director: Miłka Dziasek
- Stage Designer: Kamila Śladowska
- Costume Designer: Kamila Śladowska
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Aleksandra Chmielewska
- Date Published: 2025
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, gensubs, othersubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
We invite the youngest listeners to the magical world of sounds – musical and non-musical, beautiful and irritating, ordinary… and quite extraordinary.
The opera’s protagonists, the Sound Prince (Krzysztof Ratajski) and his assistant, Kleofas (Ambroży Golachowski), specialize in creating sonic elixirs. Their workshop is filled with a variety of sounds—the intriguing sounds of nature, but also the loud thrums of working machinery.
One day, the wizards are given a seemingly impossible task: to create an elixir of silence for a lady (Natalia Jarosiewicz) , who cannot stand the noise around her. The difficulties in creating such a potion motivate the friends to embark on a journey into the world in search of perfect silence.
Micro-music
The piece’s cast is small, allowing the musicians to fit on a variety of stages, not just the stages of major opera houses. In addition to the soloists, you’ll hear oboe, cello, piano, and electronics. A significant aspect of the music is the extensive use of extended instrumental and vocal techniques. The use of sounds such as playing the oboe reed, striking the cello’s soundboard, multiphones, overtone singing , and the use of everyday objects to produce sounds alludes to the libretto of “The Sound Prince,” which tells the story of the extraordinary, mesmerizing sounds produced by the titular character. The electronic layer, a key element of the sound and music laboratory,
is also rich in unconventional sounds .
Trivia
The children’s micro-opera “DźwikoKsiążnik” (Sound Prince) is based on Aleksandra Chmielewska’s radio play “Where Silence Lives .” The text served as an excellent basis for a radio play produced by Teatr Miniatura. The play was released on vinyl and won, among other awards, the First Prize at the “Two Theatres” Polish Radio and Television Theatre Festival.