The opera opened with an unforgettable image: a split Jackie Kennedy smashing dish after dish while reciting a surreal monologue about baking meringue — a chilling metaphor for a woman sculpted by pop culture into an icon, but silenced in her own story.
In his review, Adam Suprynowicz calls the piece a much-needed experiment for Polish opera. The libretto by Krystian Lada explores Jackie’s internal fracture, torn between public expectations and a vanishing self. Two Jackies appear on stage: the polished First Lady, played with vocal brilliance by Patrycja Krzeszowska-Kubit, and the repressed, rebellious double — Marta Ojrzyńska in a raw, physical performance of silent resistance.
Composer Katarzyna Głowicka weaves together fragments of operatic tradition — from choral lament and vocal stylization to hypnotic minimalism and electronic textures — crafting a layered sound world that echoes Jackie’s unraveling. Though some staging elements fell short and tension wavered in the extended form, the music remained emotionally incisive and sonically daring.
Requiem for an Icon may have been divisive, but it carved open space for new thinking on the opera stage — unsettling, necessary, and unforgettable.