Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets’s new opera The Mothers of Kherson will receive its world premiere at Teatr Wielki–Polish National Opera in Warsaw on 16 October 2026. Written in two acts to an English-language libretto by American playwright George Brant, the work is a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera in New York and will be presented in the original English, with Polish and English surtitles. Further performances are scheduled in the Moniuszko Auditorium on 18, 23, 25 and 27 October. The premiere will open the Polish National Opera’s 2026–27 season and places a major new work by a Ukrainian composer at the centre of the Warsaw programme.
*The Mothers of Kherson* addresses the mass abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While informed by real events, Brant’s libretto does not reconstruct one documented case. Instead, it brings together the experiences of several women whose daughters have been sent, ostensibly for safety, to a camp in Russian-occupied Crimea. The mothers’ efforts to retrieve them form the opera’s central journey: although Kherson and Crimea are geographically close, wartime conditions compel them to travel a far longer route through other countries. The narrative therefore focuses on the consequences of military occupation in individual lives, framing questions of parental responsibility, separation, bureaucratic obstruction and solidarity through operatic drama.
Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson will lead the Chorus and Orchestra of the Polish National Opera, joined by the Artos Children’s Choir. Wilson’s participation continues her association with musical initiatives supporting Ukrainian artists and culture, including the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra. A suite drawn from *The Mothers of Kherson* was introduced by that orchestra during its 2025 Resilience Tour, offering audiences an earlier encounter with music from Kolomiiets’s score before the complete staged work reaches the theatre. For the opening-night cast, Izabela Matuła sings Kateryna, Hanna Sosnowska-Bill appears as Lilia, Kamila Dutkowska as Dasha, Weronika Wojtkowska as Ołena and Małgorzata Walewska as Olha. Other principal roles include Andrei Bondarenko as Vitaly, Elissa Pfaender as Tetiana Borysowa, Katarzyna Wietrzny as Marija and Tadeusz Szlenkier as the Camp Principal.
The staging is directed by Barbara Wysocka, with sets by Barbara Hanicka, costumes by Julia Kornacka, lighting by Marc Heinz and video by Wysocka and Artur Sienicki. Paul Cremo serves as dramaturg, while Alisa Makarenko is responsible for stage movement. The creative team’s approach has been described by the Polish National Opera as politically engaged documentary opera, although the work’s dramatic structure remains deliberately non-literal, using composite characters and an archetypal journey rather than a single testimony. In this context, the opera contributes to a growing body of contemporary music theatre engaging directly with war, displacement and civilian experience. Its Warsaw premiere also signals the continuing importance of international institutional partnerships in bringing new Ukrainian operatic voices to a broad European public.
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