He was born on March 9th 1947 in Zielona Góra. His first encounters with the theatre date back to his childhood years when he, together with friends, ran a court-yard circus called “Cudaki” (“Cranks”). As a child he also learned to play the violin.
Ryszard Peryt studied chemistry at the Warsaw University, and then moved on to the Warsaw Theatre Academy, from which he graduated receiving degrees in acting (1970) and directing (1979). He was educated under the guidance of Rena Tomaszewska and Erwin Axer. Peryt also participated in the work of Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratorium Theatre and carried out his own theatrical experiments in the Academic Circle.
Soon after receiving his degree in acting he set up, together with Małgorzata Dziewulska and a group of Warsaw Theatre Academy graduates, his own theatre - the Puławskie Theatre Studio; he worked there as an actor and director between 1970 and 1975, engaging in the works of Juliusz Słowacki, C.K. Norwid, W. Mayakovsky and A. Chekhov (since 1973 the Studio was run at the Metropolitan Stage). From 1975 to 1979 he was an actor as well as an assistant to Erwin Axer in the Współczesny Theatre in Warsaw; in the following seasons he directed in the Warsaw National Theatre - when it was under the management of A. Hanuszkiewicz (Benefis by A. Chekhov, Romeo and Juliet by W. Shakespeare) and the Ateneum Theatre (Threepenny Opera by B. Brecht).
Since the beginning of his studies he was engaged in oppositional activity against the government of the People’s Republic of Poland. His activity included co-organizing a student demonstration against taking the play Dziady by Kazimierz Dejmek off the bill in the National Theatre, later he became a member of the Workers Protection Committee (KOR). He was subject to repressions on many occasions, which included arrests (August 1968) and having his professional activity restrained. Having had his performances in drama theatre banned by censorship, he decided to fully devote himself to the opera.
His opera debut came during his directing studies in 1977, preparing - for the inauguration of the Music Theatre in Słupsk - his first staging of operas by W.A Mozart - Theatre Director and Bastien und Bastienne and later Cosi fan tutte. For his diploma performance he chose Katia Kabanowa by L. Janáček which he directed in the Wrocław Opera in 1978.
In the years 1979-89 he worked for the S. Moniuszko Opera in Poznań. It was there where he achieved his first great success staging the oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake by A. Honegger (Polish première of the year 1979 according to “Theatre” periodical). This production established a twenty-five year long co-operation with set designer Andrzej Sadowski.
His productions from the “Poznań” period are considered to be amongst the most outstanding achievements of 20th century Polish opera directing. The productions were permeated with mysticism and apocalyptical visions of the world’s end. This was the time of such Polish premières as Fiery Angel by S. Prokofiev, Death in Venice by B. Britten and The Black Mask by K. Penderecki, stagings of Requiem by G. Verdi (world stage première) and Stabat Mater by K. Szymanowsky.
Since the 1980s Ryszard Peryt has been co-operating with other theatres in Poland and around the world. He directs performances in Warsaw, Łódź (among others the world premiere of Lo Sposo Deluso by W.A. Mozart in the Great Theatre in Łódź), Gdańsk, Bydgoszcz, Gdynia and abroad on opera stages in Germany, Switzerland, Italy (Teatro la Fenice), South Corea, in the operas of Belgrade, Ankara, Cairo, Al Ain (United Arab Emirates). He stages the operas of W.A. Mozart, G. Rossini, H. Berlioz, G. Verdi, A. Boito, P. Tchaikovsky, S. Moniuszko, S. Prokofiev, S. Stravinsky, B. Britten and others.
At the beginning of the 1990’s he established the Peryt Opera Institute which promotes the production of oratory works. One of his biggest achievements in this field was the world stage première of Messiah by G.F. Haendel, prepared for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, which was conducted by sir Yehudi Menuhin (the Lille Chamber Opera House, 1992).
In the years 1985-2005 he was the director of the Warsaw Chamber Opera. It was on this small stage, that he prepared together with Andrzej Sadowski the production of all the stage works of W.A. Mozart (a cycle of 26 performances realised in the years 1987-1993 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death). The performances were staged in the director’s format for fifteen years at the Mozart Festival in the Warsaw Chamber Opera, during festivals and on the opera stages of Europe, Lebanon, Israel and Japan.
Peryt also staged around a dozen early baroque and baroque operas in the Warsaw Chamber Opera, including those by J. Peri, F. Caccini, S. Landi, G.F. Haendel, J. Blow and H. Purcell and in particular, all the remaining stage works of C. Monteverdi. He directed 19th century and contemporary operas, amongst them the works of P. Tchaikovsky, G. Verdi, Z. Krauze (première of the opera Balthazar) and prepared stage adaptations of oratory works (staged inside the post-Carmelite and Lutheran churches in Warsaw as well as in the Theatre on the Island).
In the season of 1996/1997 he was the Artistic Director of the National Theatre - Opera and Ballet Stage in Warsaw. In 2001, following a nineteen year break, he returned to the drama theatre staging Acropolis by S. Wyspiansky in the National Theatre, in 2007 he also produced Wesele (The Wedding) at the New Theatre in Łódź.
In recent years he has realised projects which border on theatre - working as an actor, he elaborated and presented the poem Roman Triptych by John Paul II which was staged in the crypt of the post-Cameldulite church in Warsaw (subsequently shown in other cities of Poland) as well as ... o Bogu ukrytym (... On the Hidden God) based on poems by Karol Wojtyła in the New Theatre in Poznań. He is the creator of the stage meditation which celebrates Pope John Paul II 85th birthday in the Poznań Philharmonic.
His most recent projects are the productions of W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni - a première prepared in the United Arab Emirates for the Al Ain Classical Music Festival 2008, B. Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera at the Music Academy in Poznań and Missa pro Don Giovanni (Finale of Act II of W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Missa in D by Anonymous Polish Composer) in the Basilica of the Sacred Mountain in Gostyń in Poland. In 2009 he plans to stage Le nozze di Figaro by W.A. Mozart in the United Arab Emirates.
He has carried out theatre and opera seminars in, amongst others, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He has been lecturing at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and the Music Academy in Poznań, where within a personal project OPERA UBOGA (the Polish phrase “UBOGA” is a pun. It may be understood as “poor” or “Godly”) he has been preparing, with his students, productions of religious works in the interiors of Poznań churches.
He is the stage designer for a few of his productions, including works of Mozart: Theatre Director (PWST in Warsaw), Cosi fan tutte (the Music Theatre in Słupsk, the Biel Chamber Opera House, the Warsaw Chamber Opera), Die Zauberflöte (the Ankara State Opera in Turkey), Le nozze di Figaro (the Biel Chamber Opera House) and Don Giovanni (the Cairo Opera House in Egypt, the Warsaw Chamber Opera - production for opera in Tokyo, Al Ain Classical Music Festival in United Arab Emirates), as well as Messiah by G.F. Haendel (the Nova Opera in Bydgoszcz), Ballo in Maschera and Il Trovatore by G. Verdi (the Taegu Opera House in South Korea), Falstaff by G. Verdi (the Warsaw Chamber Opera) and Mephistopheles by A. Boito (the Great Theatre in Łódź). He is the author of choreography for Mozart’s Les petit riens and Galimatias musicum (the Warsaw Chamber Opera). Additionally, he engages in creating stage movement, adaptations, writing librettos, scripts and dialogues.
Peryt creates theatre from music, where music phrases, figures and the work’s structure are reflected in the movement, topography and stylistics of a performance. The system of work is called “incorporating the score”: “reading the score... paying utmost attention to its theatrical hints makes work on an opera similar to the body searching for its soul. Opera performance becomes a body for the music. If one manages to create theatrical reality of the opera in such a way that it is fully submerged in the music and derives its all energy and shape from it, then the sung word - libretto - finds its right time and place” (U Ryszarda Peryta, Res Publica Nova, 1/1992).
The theatre of Ryszard Peryt is a mystical theatre, drawing from the sphere of sacrum, abundant in symbols and signs, references to metaphysics, theology and art. It is also the world of human passions, feelings and spirituals battles, subjected to psychological analysis and presented from an eschatological perspective. Mysterious and beautiful, able to make people laugh and stir emotions, a unique theatre in the world of opera.
Anna Kozłowiecka
2008
