Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel  is a good opportunity for a family outing to the opera. Our production has been tailored to meet the expectations of the youngest audiences, which are known to be the most demanding. “Hensel and Gretel is sometimes considered a boring opera. Indeed, I have seen some of its terribly boring productions. That’s why we made every effort to ensure that our Hansel and Gretel is a dynamic, aesthetically sophisticated, attractive performance,” says the director, Włodzimierz Nurowski. However, the Krakow Opera’s staging of this poetic fairy tale is directed not only at children but also at opera connoisseurs. The musical language of the work is extremely sophisticated, so the fairy tale enthrals music lovers of all ages.

The premiere of Mozart unlimited was the first in the series of the Opera’s performances directed at young audiences, whose aim is to acquaint young people with various art forms present in the theatre. The performance was created as part of the Mozart Year celebrations, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Mozart unlimited presents the composer’s figure in the most thorough way possible. The musical content is comprised of fragments of Mozart’s operas, symphonies, chamber music and instrumental concertos. The show incorporates excerpts from the composer’s letters, which talk about the ups and downs of his creative work as well as the problems of his everyday and love life, thus showing Mozart as a human being. The music and narration are complemented by multimedia displays.

The libretto to this musical fairy tale for children, composed by Marta Ptaszyńska, was created by the poet Agnieszka Osiecka. Mr Marimba tells a graceful story of two children who travel the world with Mr Marimba in the search of the Enchanted Song, stolen by the Grey Bird. In Marta Ptaszyńska’s opera children perform for children, and this is what is the most beautiful – to watch the young actors and singers deal with this rather challenging material, for the composer uses the characters’ journey to present songs of various countries and continents, varied rhythms and musical scales. Mr Marimba is an excellent introduction not only to the world of opera, but also to the domain of contemporary music, which does not prove difficult to the young performers.

'The book of  forest' is a fairy tale presented in the form of musical theatre and focused on the theme of a quest for ecological values that provide human life with harmony and sense.

A dried out, primeval forest is filled with deadly silence. A Woodcutter comes to cut a 1000-year -old oak tree growing there. Before he starts his work he discovers that the reason for the lack of life in the forest is the illness of Echo who had to reverberate the screams of people who had no respect for the silence of the forest for such a long time that its throat became hoarse and finally lost its voice. This is when the animals and the birds took their leave. The Woodcutter decides to rescue the forest and goes in search of a cure for the stricken Echo. During his numerous adventures, in which he encounters the remaining inhabitants of the forest, he finds three enchanted flowers and learns the magic words contained therein, which, as we discover, are the keys to a happy life. When, in the final scene, he exclaims the magic words together with the audience so loudly that they can be heard by all the children in the world, Echo regains its voice and the forest comes back to life.

The production is addressed not only to children but also to their parents and teachers, giving them a very good reason to talk about what is really important in life, and worthy of respect and care.