Polish composer celebrated in Lithuania

The concert at the city’s Church of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Apostle was expected to feature performers from three different choirs in Lithuania, Poland and Belarus.

Moniuszko was born on May 5, 1819, in Ubiel near Minsk, present-day Belarus, and lived for some time in Vilnius, in what is now Lithuania, before moving to Warsaw.

He worked as an organist and composed his Mass in E minor at the Vilnius church where the concert was due to be held.

On Sunday, the exact anniversary of Moniuszko’s birth, the same church will host a lineup of 16 choirs from Lithuania and Poland performing a selection of the composer’s songs and operatic arias.

An international academic conference on Moniuszko’s life and work is scheduled in Vilnius for mid-June.

Moniuszko composed numerous songs when he lived in Vilnius for 18 years until 1858. These included four Litanies of Ostra Brama (Litanie Ostrobramskie) in honour of the shrine to the Virgin Mary at Ostra Brama Cathedral, a place of worship in Vilnius venerated by Lithuanians and Poles alike.

His opera Halka, in its first two-act version, was premiered in Vilnius in February 1854.

In 1858, Moniuszko settled in Warsaw, where he served as director of the National Opera. He died in 1872.

Moniuszko’s output includes the operas The Haunted Manor, The Countess and Verbum nobile, in addition to more than 250 songs, orchestral works, sacred and chamber music, as well as works for piano.

(mk/gs)