Schulz in the Opera

The article describes three operas inspired by the works of Bruno Schulz: 1976 Demiurgos by Juliusz Łuciuk, Mannequins by Zbigniew Rudziński, premiered in 1981, and Tree of Codes, written by the Australian composer Liza Lim, premiered in 2016 in Germany. The fate of two Polish operas inspired by Schulz varies considerably – there has been no stage premiere of Demiurgos yet, and Mannequins have won world fame. Demiurgos is a sonorous opera in which the composer, through the relationship of the father and his son, presents his own musical philosophy – the coexistence of tradition and modernity. Rudziński is fascinated with Schulz’s language, which he believes can be translated into a musical language and which has its musical potential. Lim’s opera, composed after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes, presents a mythical place beyond time, a fluid reality in which boundaries are unstable, and characters undefined and hybrid