• Direction

  Cezary Tomaszewski

• Composer

  Tomasz Prasqual

• Premiere

  3 July 2026 r.

• Duration

  70 min.

• Tickets

  60 pln

cast

about the event

only Love can break your Heart is an opera piece that brings together the poetry of Gaspara Stampa, one of the first women in European literature, writing with extraordinary intensity about love, desire, and loss, with texts by Logan February, a contemporary queer poet from Nigeria who explores identity, norms, and the experience of being “Other.” Two distant eras and perspectives meet beyond linear time, in a space of repetition, waiting, and longing.

The texts are woven into a score for six solo performers (two singers, two actors, and two cellists), instrumental ensemble, and electronics, creating a multilayered space between voice, body, and sound. Queer sensitivity meets the feminist power of confession.

The performance begins with a conscious embrace of the convention of the romantic lament: suffering, longing, and unfulfilled love. This convention is gradually pushed to its limits until it collapses. Returning to their love stories, the characters begin to realize that their beloveds may never have existed as real people — they were created through language, memory, and projection. At the center of the performance emerges the question: how do we tell ourselves stories about love? And how do we construct love through that storytelling?

The two cellists embody the absent lovers — initially as projections of desire, but over time they gain autonomy and their own musical voice. At the same time, each character splits into voice and body (singer and actor), creating tension between expression and presence.

only Love can break your Heart does not tell a love story; it dismantles one. It asks about the limits of the language of love, its repetitiveness, and what remains once it is exhausted. Is a form of relationship possible beyond possession and projection?

After the collapse of existing orders and structures, the performance arrives at a fragile space of silence — a blank page where something new may emerge, or where silence itself becomes the answer: a moment of exhaustion of the obsession with love and a crossing beyond the limits of form, language, and projection.

only Love can break your Heart places the experiences of marginalized people at its center and proposes music theatre as a space for rethinking intimacy, voice, and relationships beyond established narratives.

creators

composer: Tomasz Prasqual

libretto: Giulia Fornasier, Tomasz Prasqual

direction, costumes, lighting design: Cezary Tomaszewski

music director: Lilianna Krych

ensemble: Hashtag Ensemble:

Adam Eljasiński – clarinets
Julian Paprocki – clarinets, saxophone
Monika Paprocka-Całus – French horn
Michał Adamin – trumpet
Wojciech Jeliński – trombone
Marta Piórkowska – violin
Stefania Grabiec – violin
Aleksandra Demowska-Madejska – viola
Mateusz Loska – double bass
Paweł Janas – accordion
Krzysztof Kozłowski – synthesizers
Magda Kordylasińska-Pękala – percussion
Lilianna Krych – conductor

production: Zofia Zajkowska and Millena Kamińska

visual identity: Aleksandra Ołdak

sound direction: Kosma Standera

organized by: Warszawskie Towarzystwo Sceniczne, Fundacja Sfera Harmonii

co-production: TR Warszawa