“The Best City in the World. An Opera About Warsaw” now available online on VOD
From 5 December 2025, audiences can experience one of the season’s most celebrated events – “The Best City in the World. An Opera About Warsaw” – online at vod.teatrwielki.pl. The opera by Cezary Duchnowski drew full houses for all five performances at the Polish National Opera, attracting 8,500 spectators, and will now be accessible to viewers throughout Poland and beyond.
Directed by Barbara Wiśniewska, the opera tells the story of one of the largest urban planning projects of the 20th century, shown through the lens of individual human lives. Beniamin Bukowski’s libretto, drawing on the language of the era – from political speeches to urban-planning jargon – creates a contemporary drama rather than a historical reconstruction. Its protagonists are a modernist architect from BOS (Agata Zubel) and an American journalist (Joanna Freszel). Their encounter becomes a clash of ideas, experiences and visions for the city’s future.
The music combines orchestral scale with electronics and choral writing, capturing both the magnitude of destruction and the personal perspectives of the city’s inhabitants. The production explores the rebuilding of Warsaw as a collective effort that transformed traumatic experience into the foundation of a new community. It is a story about the past – a city rising from ruins – but also a timely reflection on urban life today, situated between architectural visions, political decisions and the dreams of its residents.
The opera was conceived and curated by Jarosław Trybuś, an art historian, architecture critic and lecturer. It was produced as a co-production between the Polish National Opera and Sinfonia Varsovia to mark the 80th anniversary of the beginning of Warsaw’s reconstruction. Its presentation on 19 September 2025 opened the 68th Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music.
Who? What? Where? When?
“The Best City in the World” by Cezary Duchnowski
Streaming: December 5, 2025 – February 4, 2026
Where: vod.teatrwielki.pl