Adam Bernard Mickiewicz was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is one of Poland's "Three Bards" and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe.
Dziady is a poetic drama by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It is considered one of the greatest works of both Polish and European Romanticism. To George Sand and Georg Brandes, Dziady was a supreme realization of Romantic drama theory, to be ranked with such works as Goethe's Faust and Byron's Manfred.
The Great Emigration was the emigration of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians, particularly from the political and cultural élites, from 1831 to 1870, after the failure of the November Uprising of 1830–1831 and of other uprisings such as the Kraków uprising of 1846 and the January Uprising of 1863–1864. The emigration affected almost the entirety of political elite in Congress Poland. The exiles included artists, soldiers and officers of the uprising, members of the Sejm of Congress Poland of 1830–1831 and several prisoners-of-war who escaped from captivity.
Napoleon Stanisław Adam Feliks Zygmunt Krasiński was a Polish poet traditionally ranked after Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki as one of Poland's Three Bards – the Romantic poets who influenced national consciousness in the period of Partitions of Poland.
Juliusz Słowacki was a Polish Romantic poet. He is considered one of the "Three Bards" of Polish literature — a major figure in the Polish Romantic period, and the father of modern Polish drama. His works often feature elements of Slavic pagan traditions, Polish history, mysticism and orientalism. His style includes the employment of neologisms and irony. His primary genre was the drama, but he also wrote lyric poetry. His most popular works include the dramas Kordian and Balladyna and the poems Beniowski, Testament mój and Anhelli.
Pan Tadeusz is an epic poem by the Polish poet, writer, translator and philosopher Adam Mickiewicz. The book, written in Polish alexandrines, was first published by Aleksander Jełowicki on 28 June 1834 in Paris. It is deemed one of the last great epic poems in European literature.
Stanisław Moniuszko was a Polish composer, conductor and teacher. He wrote many popular art songs and operas, and his music is filled with patriotic folk themes of the peoples of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He is generally referred to as "the father of Polish national opera". Since the 1990s Stanisław Moniuszko is being recognized in Belarus as an important figure to Belarusian culture as well.
Michał Elwiro Andriolli was a Polish illustrator, painter and architect of Italian descent. He is notable for his illustrations to Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz, as well as a distinctive style of villas built outside Warsaw. He was probably most well known for his architecture – Świdermajer. This was a regional architectural style common in the Otwock, Poland region. These structures were wooden in construction and were popularized from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its creator was Michał Elwiro Andriolli. It is characterized by gazebos and decorations above the windows, some of the houses also had turrets. Pine trees were planted together with the buildings as part of the composition.
Kaunas Castle is a medieval castle in Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania. Archeological evidence suggests that it was originally built during the mid-14th century, in the Gothic style. Its site is strategic—a rise on the banks of the Nemunas River near its confluence with the Neris River. At the beginning of the 21st century, about one-third of the castle was still standing.
A ballade, in classical music since the late 18th century, refers to a setting of a literary ballad, a narrative poem, in the musical tradition of the Lied, or to a one-movement instrumental piece with lyrical and dramatic narrative qualities reminiscent of such a song setting, especially a piano ballade.
Maria Szymanowska was a Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. She toured extensively throughout Europe, especially in the 1820s, before settling permanently in St. Petersburg. In the Russian imperial capital, she composed for the court, gave concerts, taught music, and ran an influential salon.
I Lituani is an opera consisting of a prologue and three acts by Amilcare Ponchielli to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on the historical poem Konrad Wallenrod written by Lithuanian-Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It premiered at La Scala in Milan on 7 March 1874.
Literary Association of the Friends of Poland is a British organisation of solidarity with Poles, founded February 25, 1832 in United Kingdom by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell and German lawyer Adolphus Bach. Although the creation of the LAFP was the result of deep pro-Polish sympathies of Campbell and the whole contemporary British public opinion, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski did attend a dinner for the association, in Edinburgh 1835 along with Count Zamoyski.
Grażyna is an 1823 narrative poem by Adam Mickiewicz, written in the summer of 1822 during a year-long sabbatical in Vilnius, while away from his teaching duties in Kaunas.
Frédéric Chopin's Four Ballades are single-movement pieces for solo piano, composed between 1831 and 1842. They are considered to be some of the most important and challenging pieces in the standard piano repertoire.
The Frédéric Chopin Monument in Warsaw is a large bronze statue of Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) that now stands in the upper part of Warsaw's Royal Baths Park, adjacent to Aleje Ujazdowskie.
Konrad von Wallenrode was the 24th Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, serving from 1391 to 1393. Modern sources are friendly towards Konrad, although they claim he was hot-blooded, proud, and had tendencies to be cruel.
Wincenty Smokowski, was a Polish-Lithuanian painter and illustrator in the Academic and Classical styles. He created portraits, historical scenes, landscapes and genre works; notably realistic, unprejudiced portrayals of Jews and Gypsies.
The Plague Maiden, is the name given to an apparition from a Lithuanian-Polish folktale. She was said to appear before a plague befell a town. She is often described as waving a red handkerchief through victim's doors, either because it is dyed that way or because it is soaked with blood. Some folktales say that she wears white and has a fiery wreath across her temples. Another such description of her shows that she is an older woman, haggard and tall. Her ailing frame is draped by a decrepit white robe.
Konrad Wallenrod is a Polish-language opera by Władysław Żeleński to a libretto by Zygmunt Sarnecki (1837-1922) and Władysław Noskowski (1841-1881) based on the epic poem Konrad Wallenrod (1828) by Adam Mickiewicz. The premiere was 1885 in Lviv, which was not prepared technically to create a grand opera on this scale. Notably at the premiere the elaborate harp part was played on the piano by Paderewski. A further staging in Krakow was not followed by a planned staging in Warsaw, which was stalled partly due to the Tsarist censor's concerns with the subject. Konrad Wallenrod was not performed in Warsaw till the 1930s.
