ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a survey of the traditions of Wagnerism in Poland during the second half of the nineteenth century and around the turn of the twentieth century. The cult of classicism that dominated Poland during Moniuszko's time, coupled with a common conception regarding the form and purpose of national music, shaped this negative attitude toward any form of modernism. Young Poland promoted such trends as Decadence, neo-Romanticism, Symbolism, Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Nietzsche's essay was widely read in Poland in the 1890s, either in its original version or in a French translation by Maria Baumgartner. The third Wagner premiere in post-war Poland was Der fliegende Hollnder, staged in December 1964 on the boards of the Silesian Opera in Bytom. The list of Wagner spectacles seen in Poland during the last two decades of the People's Republic closed with a guest performance of the entire Ring by the Royal Opera of Stockholm in Warsaw, in 1978.
