Ubu rex vs Ubu roi – a dialogue of art genres, movements and periods
This paper contrasts two artistic representations of the theme of the Polish king that appeared in France and Poland within a distance of a century, that is a musical vision of Ubu roi, composed in 1991 by Krzysztof Penderecki and his librettist Jerzy Jarocki in the German language opera entitled Ubu rex and its literary French original, Ubu roi, written by the playwright Alfred Jarry in 1896. This paper aims, first and foremost, at analyzing the style in which characters and events are presented and thereby the nature of a peculiar dialogue between these two works of art belonging to different periods, cultural backgrounds, and artistic genres.
