“Barbara Wiśniewska’s production is freely associative and, through Bartek Macias’ multimedia images, brings the depths of the forest behind the stage into play. Since the Stabat Mater plays a fundamental role in Penderecki’s Passion, the appearance of a boy with his possible mother can be seen as a translation. They find silvery emergency blankets in the forest, which the children’s choir spreads out on stage. Instead of a pyre, an oversized scaffold is set ablaze: here, too, the association remains open: it could be a suitcase, a book, or a winged altarpiece. All three approaches are inherent in the work: the Holocaust, the Bible, and worship.” (Radioclassic.at)

It is now that the theme of this year’s festival comes to mind, as suggested by its founder and artistic director, Tomasz Konieczny the lonely wanderer, homeless, in a world ravaged by physical and digital war. Mother and son come upon something wrapped in blue plastic. By now they have reached the real stage dragging this contraption, winding their way through the ranks of the choirs and bringing it downstage. The viewer, having seen so many bags like this in crime shows, immediately thinks of a corpse, but after undoing endless tapes, mundane aluminum foil wraps to keep warm are distributed amongst the children’s chorus, who have clambered upon the stage. Are these needed to not only protect from the really chilly evening air or metaphorically provide warmth and protection from a brutal, cold reality? Stage director Wiśniewska thus reflects on a humanistic theme that is symbolised on the posters of this year’s Baltic  Opera Festival by an astronaut as a ‘lonely wanderer’ and runs like a thread through every production: loneliness, exclusion and humanity. (Operawire)