Polish Toledo

This blog is associated with www.polishtoledo.com

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Lira Ensemble Cleveland Christmas Show


One thing I appreciate about my hometown of Cleveland is the support Cleveland Polonia shows when Polish cultural events are performed.

Janet and I made the 2-hour trek recently to see “A Polish Christmas” at the Cleveland Music Hall. The performance by the Lira Ensemble of Chicago [the only professional performing arts company in the United States specializing in Polish music, song, and dance] featured Carols, Paderewski and more.

An extraordinarily wide variety of entertainment was provided by the orchestra, dancers and singers. Besides the wonderfully enjoyable Kolendy featuring carols like Bog sie rodzi, O gwiazdo Betlejem and Gdy Sliczna Panna, the 40-piece orchestra accompanied the singers and soloists in a number of beautiful opera pieces by Paderewski and Moniuszko. Mazurkas and Polonaise were also performed in addition to a spectacular Polish-American Christmas medley with the use of voice and handbells seen in the picture above.


The Cleveland Music Hall is an opulent and well-tuned music venue. The 3,500 seats were nearly all filled and it was easy to tell how appreciative the audience was by their enthusiastic applause.

Lira takes its name from (in English) “lyre” a traditional symbol of music. Their Christmas Concert Tour this year only played Cleveland and Buffalo besides Lira's home base of Chicago. This group sets the standard of quality for Polish performing arts in the USA.

2 Comments:

At 7:24 PM , Blogger Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

Do they travel & perform elsewhere?

Do they have a Web Site?

My family and & would travel to see them ;-)

 
At 7:28 PM , Blogger Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

Denny,

Found it!

 

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