| To be an opera star, it helps to be a natural linguist as well as an exceptional singer. In any one season, you may be required to sing in French, Italian, English and German. It doesn't hurt to have a smattering of Spanish and Russian either. You never know.But when it comes to singing in Polish, most opera singers struggle to sound convincing, says the Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu.
"I speak a few languages but I find Polish the most difficult language to sing in," Pirgu says, ahead of his Australian debut in Opera Australia's staging of composer Karol Szymanowski's King Roger. It is the first time the company has performed an opera in Polish.
"There are a lot of consonants like 'z', 'cz', 'dz', 'sz' and 'tz'. They all sound the same to us but are completely different to a Polish speaker," Pirgu says. "Opera singers are usually more concerned with the beauty of their vowels so these sounds are difficult for us."
Australian baritone Michael Honeyman, who sings the title role in Kasper Holten's acclaimed Royal Opera House production, has been working on his Polish for three months. "I began with three sessions a week with my coach, just talking through the text with her to get the accents and stresses correct before I started singing," Honeyman says. "You have to get things like the hard 'n' and the soft 'n' right. There are moments where I feel like I'm spitting out nothing but consonants in some phrases." Speaking from Copenhagen, Holten sympathises. "Our King Roger in London was Polish [Mariusz Kwiecien], I'm sure he had many private laughs at our pronunciation."
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Despite the language barrier, Holten's King Roger – the first production of Szymanowski's opera in London for almost 40 years – was a major hit for the Royal Opera House. Critics hailed it "a major artistic triumph", and "easily the best thing Holten has staged".
Written in the early 1920s, Krol Roger tells of a Christian king's fascination – philosophical and physical – with a pagan shepherd-priest, and of an ordered, hierarchical world laid to waste.
Watch a Trailer and listen an opening hymn "Boże pobłogosław" here
"When I first heard it I was hypnotised," Holten says. "It's the best way to describe it – hypnotised. You feel that this story is very, very personal to Szymanowski."
The composer "lived a life of repressed sexuality", he says. "Szymanowski was homosexual and that was not easy in Catholic Poland. He also lived through the Russian revolution and knew what it was to experience mob rule. He watched when a mob raided his estate and threw his two beloved pianos into a lake. All of these experiences he channelled into this incredible opera."
Holten's production, designed by Danish compatriot Steffen Aarfing, is dominated by a colossal head.
"I can only imagine how big it must look in the Sydney Opera House stage," Holten says. The head symbolises a man and a society ruled by intellect. "He is literally all head, all control, all power. On a political level, the head also represents perhaps the beginning of the propaganda art of the 20th century, or an image of god.
"But also, it can be seen as society's expectations weighing down on King Roger. The head has many meanings."
Pirgu, who comes to the OA production having sung the role of the shepherd in its debut season at London's Covent Garden in 2015, is used to singing in the giant head's shadow. "In London, everybody was surprised by the opera," he says. "People were shocked by the beauty of the music. It doesn't matter that it sounds unfamiliar to your ears. "It is such a big sound. There is so much beauty. Szymanowski wanted to punch people in the face and shock them with the music."
source SMH
opera.org.au/whatson/events/king-roger-sydney | 
