Madame Pylinska and Chopin’s Secret
Madame Pylinska, prickly as a thorn bush, imposes her eccentric piano-teaching methods on her pupil: she makes him lie under the instrument, draw circles in water, listen to silence, make love slowly... Hour follows hour, bewilderment gives way to surprise, and young Erik learns not only music, but life itself. This is a touching and funny story in which, among other things, snobbish cats, music-loving spiders adored by an auntie, and, of course, Chopin’s melodies all play a part, weaving through and filling the entire performance space.
After the triumph of the theater production “Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran” and a four-year touring run (more than 400 performances in France, Belgium and Switzerland, Italy, Lebanon, Canada and the USA), the award-winning, highly prolific Belgian-French writer and director Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, beloved by readers and audiences alike, has returned to the stage with a witty and autobiographical one-man show. While the play “Madame Pylinska and Chopin’s Secret” brings countless vivid characters to life, the musical accompaniment is performed by a world-renowned pianist - Nicolas Stavy. Exploring the work of Frédéric Chopin, Schmitt turns to the composer’s most famous pieces and also leafs through the pages of lesser-known works. This instructive, deeply personal story about growing up and the formation of character continues the path the writer began with the worldwide bestseller “My Life with Mozart”: great composers are not only musicians and authors of music, but also spiritual guardians who help us live. The production, in which the author himself performs, combines music and the theater stage - Nicolas Stavy, laureate of the prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw, performs Chopin’s works and becomes a full participant in this captivating story.
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s production “Madame Pylinska and Chopin’s Secret” is performed in French with subtitles in Latvian and Russian.
