• 04-02-2023, Saturday, at 7:00 pm - Ticketed event

On Thursday 7th February at 7 p.m., a recital by Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż will inaugurate a new cycle at the Lentz Villa, titled AD ASTRA. In this cycle we will present the output of extraordinary artists acclaimed in prestigious concert halls in Poland and worldwide.

The programme of the outstanding soprano’s recital consists of arias by Franz Lehár, selected, among others, from such popular operettas as Der Zarewitsch, Gipsy Love, The Land of Smiles, Paganini, and The Merry Widow.

The Hungarian artist Franz Lehár has played a leading role in music history as one of the greatest composers of operettas. His impact on this genre has been so significant that today he is considered as the founder of the modern operetta. The works of this ‘Hungarian operetta king’ continue to delight audiences with their wide palette of musical colours. They are ‘tinged with irony and distinguished by an exceptional brilliance, mixed with a note of nostalgia and refinement’. Our star, Professor Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż, will most certainly prove the truth of these words during her evening concert. She will be accompanied by violinist Paweł Maślanka and pianist Olga Bila.


Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

• Hanna Glawari’s aria from the operetta The Merry Widow (‘I Welcome You’)
• Sonja’s aria from the operetta Der Zarewitsch (‘Someone Will Come’)
• Elisabeth’s waltz from the operetta Schön ist die Welt (‘I Am in Love’)
• Vilja Song from the operetta The Merry Widow (‘Vilja, O Vilja’)

Giuditta’s aria from the operetta Giuditta (‘On My Lips Every Kiss Is Like Wine’)
Perf. Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż, Paweł Maślanka, Olga Bila

Waltz on themes from the operetta Gipsy Love
Perf. Paweł Maślanka, Olga Bila

Ilona’s csárdás from the operetta Gipsy Love (‘I Hear the Sound of Cymbals’)
Anna Elisa’s aria from the operetta Paganini (‘Love, Thou Heaven on Earth’)
Lisa’s aria from the operetta The Land of Smiles (‘All Is Over’)
Eva’s aria from the operetta Eva (‘I So Often Return’)

Lisa’s aria from the operetta The Land of Smiles (‘Many Thanks for Your Love’)
Perf. Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż, Paweł Maślanka, Olga Bila

• Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż
• Paweł Maślanka
• Olga Bila

Bios

Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż

Graduate of the Faculty of Vocal Music and Drama at the Felix Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz; since 2010 – academic staff member at the Artistic Musical Education Department, and later – the Vocal Performance Department of the Academy of Art in Szczecin. Initiator and organiser of International Vocal Workshops held in cooperation with the International Festival of Organ and Chamber Music in Kamień Pomorski. Founder of the Pomeranian Interculture Network foundation, which supports culture, art, and the educational activity of young artists. Soloist of the Szczecin Opera at the Castle, where she has made brilliant appearances in many leading roles, among others in operas by Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Leoncavallo, Mozart, Orff, Puccini, Richard Strauss, Szymanowski, and Verdi, as well as operettas by Gilbert, Kálmán, Lehár, Offenbach, and Johann Strauss II.

The artist performs and records extensively. Of particular note have been her masterful interpretation of Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder under the baton of Maestro Kerry Stratton, the album Il Tramonto (with the Baltic Neopolis Quartet) featuring outstanding Italian and Spanish chamber works, as well as the CD From Belcanto to Verismo, recorded in 2016 in Sofia with the eminent tenor Kamen Chanev and the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Tylkowska-Drożdż is the recipient of an Amber Ring Award for the role of Nedda- Colombina in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, as well as the Silver Honorary Badge of the West Pomeranian Griffin in recognition of her contributions to the region’s culture.

Joanna Tylkowska-Drożdż, DMus, Habil., professor of the Academy of Arts, is the author of, among others, the books The Szczecin City Theatre: An Outline of History (1849-1944) and Szczecin’s Musical Salons in the Nineteenth Century, both published (in Polish) in the series of monographs dedicated to Szczecin’s musical history.

Paweł Maślanka

He graduated with the highest honours from Warsaw’s Chopin University of Music (class of Prof. Krzysztof Podejko). Prize-winner in numerous nationwide violin competitions (in, among others, Gdańsk, Łódź, Katowice, Poznań, Warsaw, and Zielona Góra), he has toured extensively with the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra (in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan – Tokyo, Kanazawa, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), sharing the stage with such artists as Martha Argerich, Nigel Kennedy, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Ivo Pogorelić.

Since 2010, Maślanka has been the principal leader of the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, with which he also appears as a soloist.

The artist is also a teacher at the Feliks Nowowiejski State Music School Complex and a lecturer at the Academy of Art in Szczecin, from which he obtained a Doctor of Arts degree in 2016. He is a co-founder and artistic director of West Side Sinfonietta chamber orchestra, made up of excellent musicians and orchestra leaders from Wrocław’s National Forum of Music and the Mieczysław Karłowicz Philharmonic in Szczecin. He has also pursued his passions as an excellent organiser of prestigious artistic events in Poland and abroad.