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The evening issue of Krakow's Czas of 19th March, 1901 features the first fragment of the critical review of the world premiere of Stanisław Wyspiański's The Wedding (Wesele) whose sequels continued to be published in a few following issues of the daily. The article was more than just a review: expertly written and highly discerning general text apparently being more of an essay on the subject of the play than a review of a theatrical production. It is hard to believe but that fundamental criticism on The Wedding - both the play and its premiere performance - has not been printed in full since those days. Today, we can open a copy of the offprint that Czas published as Wesele Wyspiańskiego (Krakow, 1901) soon after its newspaper edition. Yet this is not the only sensation, for the author of the text was no one else but Rudolf Starzewski, a Krakow journalist of great renown who was invited to Lucjan Rydel's wedding described in the drama. Could there be anyone more competent to discuss this drama? Starzewski's essay leads us directly into the midst of that world: into the milieu that The Wedding describes. The single page of Czas reproduced in the book provides an insight into what other news could be found in the paper on 19th March, 1901. Yet through Starzewski's review we enter also the world contemporary to Wyspiański; the world that received his drama. This is superbly shown in the essay section of the article, whose last fragment lets us "brush shoulders" with the cultural and theatrical world of Krakow from that 16th day of March, now over a hundred years distant. What was the applause that Wyspiański received? How did the actors do? Which of them was advised to "get rid of puny provincial habits"? And why didn't the female artists hesitate to put on loose corsets? |
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