Cherished by the Poles as their greatest national opera, HALKA was first presented more than 150 years ago, in Vilnius, by composer Stanislaw Moniuszko. An expanded and revised version, with the then-customary ballets and choruses, was presented ten years later, in 1858, in Warsaw. It is a tragic and dramatic tale of young love betrayed, callous aristocrats and virtuous peasants - in short, the stuff of grand opera around the world. But Moniuszko (1819-1872), the "Polish Schubert," used these traditional elements to create, with this single work, Polish national opera. He wrote at a time when Poland itself as a nation had been wiped off the map of Europe, divided among and occupied by Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary. In addition to Halka, he wrote dozens of operas and operettas, hundreds of songs, and demonstrated, as Chopin had done only a few years earlier, the creative energies of the Polish people.

Moniuszko, a gifted melodist, stands alongside Dvorak and Smetana, Grieg and Tchaikovsky, musical propagandists of national culture. Closely identified with Polish nationalism, Halka was presented by major companies in Poland to mark the end of World war I and, later, World II. It is rarely taken up outside of Poland, and has never been presented by any major American opera company.