Un ballo in maschera

‘Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss’, sings Jim Morrison in “The Crystal Ship”. The song inspired a fragment of the set design in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera directed by Karolina Sofulak for the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen. The Doors’ song tells the story of a goodbye, in Sofulak’s production a crystal ship appears on stage, as if carved in ice: this is how the King bids farewell to the love of his life, Amelia. It is here, also, that he finds his death. (…)

Crinoline dresses, wigs with sailboat fascinators, giant admiral hats and the aforementioned crystal ship – Karolina Sofulak’s production has a fairy-tale and spectacle nature to it, which opera directors increasingly often tend to eschew. (…) This show, however, has a bitter taste of the approaching end of an era – the theme underlying the staging is the decline and burning out of certain social and political concepts. (…)

Vogue

L’elisir d’amore

“Charming L’elisir d’amore (…).The director avoids any slapstick or cliché, the humour is subtle, and magic unfolds in the love scenes.”

Das Opernmagazin

Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

“Directed by Karolina Sofulak and lit Caravaggio-style by Natalie Rowland, Combattimento itself was utterly gripping in its mixture of eroticism and violence, as Nicholas Hurndall Smith’s charismatic Tancredi and Faye Newton’s assertive Clorinda grappled and fought while Nicholas Mulroy’s anguished Narrator looked on”.

The Guardian

The Golden Dragon

“The way the rape was depicted was shattering: the violin, symbolizing the delicate body of The Cricket, is destroyed with a wrench previously used to extract the tooth. This is probably the first truly justified smashing of an instrument on stage that I have seen”

Ruch Muzyczny

Vanda

“The director of Vanda managed to avoid going Facebook on us (it used to be called ‘go publicist’), which is a brave choice when everyone does it. She did not do a show about ‘this’ or ‘that’, but instead she made a performance, she staged Vanda, letting the singers sing, the musicians play and the audience watch”

Przekrój

Vanda

“We were transferred by Karolina Sofulak into a fantasy world where everything is a play with convention”.

“Well-devised stage movement, flexibility achieved by the play of lights, a great cast, the Sinfonietta playing wonderfully, the Polish Radio Choir with their unexpected acting grace, contributed in my opinion to this show being the greatest success of this edition of the festival”

Szafa Melomana

L’elisir d’amore 

“Fortunately, director Karolina Sofulak does not focus only on the visual side. The stylistic concept was created to deprive the libretto of its weakest point - the kitschy idyll, which results from the setting of the plot in the provinces. Thanks to this, the so-far trivial content gains weight - owing to a pinch of exoticism, a bit of magic, but also questions about demagoguery” .

“Sweet melodrama is intertwined with a fairy-tale and farce about the power of money, and the director’s ironic sense of humour, balancing on the border between gags from Disney stories and Monty Python, serves as a connecting force”.

“She skilfully uses the convention, keeping a straight face in the moments of the story that focus on the power that lies in following one’s heart.”

Gazeta Wyborcza

Manon Lescaut

“They’re at their best in an electrifying scene in which Geronte’s harem of women (and girls) are paraded for his leering punters, all in matching gold lamé dresses, all with the dead eyed look of contempt on their faces, all mere commodities in a world made by, and for, rich men (…). It’s a scene that will live long in the memory.”

Broadwayworld.com

Manon Lescaut

“The result was a sophisticated and intelligent updating, which cast new light on the piece without doing violence to Puccini’s original dramaturgy. It made economic sense too, with the just one flexible set and the removal of the need to have separate soloists in Act Three”. “Sofulak’s production gave an interesting new slant to the action, successfully moving it away from its period element. The results were full of impulse, drama and passion thanks to fine performances from Peter Robinson and the cast”.  

planethugill.com

FAUST

“Sofulak tells her stories in an interesting way, she knows how to breathe life onto the stage. She lays down new meanings under the content of classic texts. Just as Charles Gounod deviated from Goethe’s eschatological and metaphysical reflections while writing his operatic hit, Karolina Sofulak evades the romantic and Christian significance of Gounod’s work.” “And yet this Faust is a success. Sofulak directs it with a strong hand of an artist who knows what she wants”.

Gazeta Wyborcza

FAUST

“Charles Gounod’s Faust in Karolina Sofulak’s interpretation is a coherent tale of courage, humanistic ideals and tolerance that always stand in stark contrast to life’s emptiness and passivity”.

“Sofulak cleverly stands by her interpretation, which neither interferes with the musical layer of the work, nor does it thoughtlessly reproduce nineteenth-century aesthetics. Her Faust will appeal to both those who look for ‘classic’ elements in opera, as well as those who want to see a reflection of contemporary reality in historical works.”

“Sofulak displays great knowledge and intuition. She identified all awkward or tedious moments in Barbier’s and Carré’s libretto (which are numerous) and with the help of set design, lighting design and singers’ performances she filled the opera with new qualities. Frequent set changes were not an empty firework aimed at distracting the viewer from the awkwardness of the text, but instead co-created subsequent planes of the story, thanks to which the characters appeared more fleshed out. Her dramaturgical sense and great ability to create collective scenes prevented the show from dragging, and at the same time the staging never overwhelmed by seeming chaotic or accidental”.

kultura.poznań.pl

FAUST

“Faust bargained with Mephisto for the possibility of moving to our contemporary reality, which Karolina Sofulak shows in her intelligent production in Poznań”. “Karolina Sofulak’s directing professionalism is shown by the fact that even though she operates with the language well known from many contemporary stagings, each idea layered by her has its own, frequently surprising, place within the action”.

Rzeczpospolita

Cavalleria rusticana

“Most seasons, the ON team manages to come up with at least one show that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anything in the country (if not the world). Their production of Cavalleria rusticana is surely a contender this year”. “Having set Alfio on the path of vengeance, Santuzza rights the upturned armchair and settles down to watch the sentence be carried out. This, in itself, is a directorial masterstroke (one of several Sofulak pulls off): Turiddu’s parting injunction that his mother must ‘look after Santuzza’ is piled with searing irony as the woman he pities gloats on from across the stage.” https://bachtrack.com/review-opera-north-cavalleria-rusticana-trial-by-jury-allen-ringborg-sofulak-little-greats-september-2017 Bachtrack.com **** “I loved the symbolism in a key tableau where the man about to be murdered – the vain, reckless Turridu (the name means ‘saviour’) – opens his shirt, climbs on a metal platform and poses, arms outstretched, against a huge wooden cross as Christ, with the girl he has dishonoured, Santuzza, grieving and flipping her long hair about at its foot. Director Karolina Sofulak knows her devotional paintings!” 

Britishtheatreguide.com

Cavalleria rusticana

“Perhaps, most importantly, the new setting gave us a believable milieu which enabled Sofulak to concentrate on the intense personal relationships without the local colour and the overdone emotionalism of stage Sicily (…). Sofulak made us concentrate on the relationships and the cross currents”.

“Sofulak showed that you have to start from the story, using a setting which enables you to tell the story in the way you want”. 

PlanetHugill.com

Pygmalion

“Rameau’s one-act opera is charmingly re-invented here as a picture-book story”.

Planethugill.com

Albert Herring

“The staging concept is a rather subtle play on words and meanings. It gets most hilarious when exemplary citizens, firmly – it would seem – embedded in their identity, throw off their masks.” (…) “British comic opera is something little known in Poland, so it was a good idea to entrust directing Herring to Karolina Sofulak. Not only because she had spent 8 years in Great Britain, where she worked at various opera houses, including Opera North in Leeds. But rather because she has a good hand for comic scenes and brims with ideas she can skillfully convey to the audience. The name Sofulak guarantees a lot of good fun with the theatrical form itself, often with simple means – a few props and a play of lights. Just like in old Venetian commedia dell’arte, where all that was necessary to keep the audience thoroughly entertained was a stage platform, a curtain, and a few actors wearing masks and costumes. In Albert Herring, with the thrifty but ingenious set by Dorota Karolczak, everything is ambiguous and underpinned by a question about true identity. The director skillfully uses the aesthetics of camp, which was especially effective in the first act of the opera”.

wyborcza.pl

Albert Herring

“A sense of cheeky play on conventions is the strongest point of Karolina Sofulak’s staging. The set design by Dorota Karolczak proves to be successful, as she combines the three action spaces: the proscenium, a raised cube and a throne with elements carrying symbolic meaning: a ladder, serving, like in The Barber of Seville, as escape from a place of oppression, and a magnificent staircase straight from boulevard theater”. (…) The show unfolds smoothly, with some ideas having a second and third layer of hidden meaning. (…) The creators of the Poznań production play amusingly with the bitter taste of Herring.”

Ruch Muzyczny

Albert Herring

“The director of the Poznań production, Karolina Sofulak, highlights this sense of social duplicity without depriving the opera of its absurd humor” (…). “Sofulak’s show is entertaining to watch, driven by action, and the director uses clear theatrical language (…). She is generally faithful to the libretto, does not add content that is not there: she rather layers her vision of the story onto the original text. What is more, she manages to maintain a balance between comedy and a serious problem hidden under its guise” (…). I would love to see the show again myself, because I have the impression that there are still a few puzzles waiting to be discovered in it”.

kultura.poznan.pl

Turandot

“If art is to bring catharsis, and that was its destiny according to Aristotle, Turandot directed by Karolina Sofulak at the Krakow Opera meets these conditions one hundred percent”. (…) Sofulak, in her wise production, shows that opera theatre can come very close to reality without using an unequivocal political allusion, but rather with subtle scenic means, by appealing to the sensitivity and intelligence of the audience”.

Gazeta Wyborcza 

Turandot

“This harsh world, burnt by the blood-orange sun and with planets visible at night, was created by the director and the set and costume designer Ilona Binarsch. Among her projects, Turandot’s female entourage wearing flower-like dresses stood out in particular. The beginning of the second act was flawlessly directed: imperial dignitaries recalling life away from the court while taking a bath in golden bathtubs”.

Ruch Muzyczny

Turandot

“Paradoxically, even though the name of the Chinese capital – Beijing – appears relatively often in the libretto, the change of time and place of action does not disturb the convention or message of the work as a whole. In costumes inspired by futurism and stage design by Ilona Binarsch, embellished with a rather dreamy choreography by Monika Myśliwiec, Sofulak’s Turandot comes across as an extremely coherent production. (…) In her interpretation, we are dealing with a contemporary, feminist approach. It is Kalaf’s words that awaken love in Turandot’s inaccessible heart. The kiss between the two takes place only a moment before the curtain falls, with the consent of both. It is a device that significantly changes the tone of the whole story. It allows you to see the end result in a brighter, more optimistic light. (…). The world depicted in Karolina Sofulak’s Turandot is derailed. Love will not fix it, but it can restore the fullness of human existence”.

teatrdlawszystkich.eu

Turandot

“However, what distinguishes Krakow’s Turandot is precisely this well-thought-out, A-to-Z staging idea. The concept is clear, engaging, and in tune with text and music. It should also be noted that although the director’s ideas are interesting and allow us to look at the performances in a new light, they do not overshadow what is most important – the space for experiencing operatic emotions. I admit that the chorus shone the brightest for me in the show – not only musically, but also in terms of acting. Here, thanks to a precise background of choral actions, the whole staging came to life along with this mysterious, desert land in which we found ourselves”.

Pop-culture Animal (Poland’s most popular pop culture blog)