The King and the Tsarina

The romance between Poland's last king and Tsarina Catherine the Great was no secret - it was to the Russian ruler that Stanisław August owed his throne in Warsaw. The play "The King and the Tsarina", directed by Jerzy Zelnik, is based on a selection of correspondence between the two monarchs.

In 1755, the young Polish aristocrat Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski arrived in St. Petersburg as secretary to the English ambassador and caught Catherine's attention. Their affair came to light - her husband Peter reacted with anger but soon composed himself, having his own extramarital affairs. In July 1762, he died by his wife's order. Two years later, Catherine, now as tsarina, made Poniatowski ruler of Poland - only to lead, thirty-one years on, to the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and deprive him not just of his throne but of his entire kingdom.

The creators present a psychological and emotional portrait of former lovers who, under the guise of sibling-like relations, wage a diplomatic war over conflicting national interests. Echoes of their former passion occasionally surface between the lines of their letters, but the true substance of this correspondence is brutal, unsentimental political calculation. The actors of the Polish Classical Theatre extract from it the full complexity of the relationship between Stanisław August and Catherine II - a dramatic blend of longing, hope, fear, contempt, and cold calculation.

Duration: 1h 10′

Reduced tickets are available for students, seniors over 60, people with disabilities, and holders of the Large Family Card.