King Stakh’s Wild Hunt
Directed by BFT’s co-founding Artistic Directors, Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada, King Stakh’s Wild Hunt is a conversation between art forms, interlacing opera, theatre, multimedia and live music to tell a story rooted in the history of Belarusy.
King Stakh's Wild Hunt is one of the most popular novels by the visionary Belarusian writer, Uladzimir Karatkievich. Inspired by Eastern European folklore, it follows the ghostly hunt to free a young heiress from an evil curse.
One day in late autumn 1888, Andrey Belaretsky, a young ethnographer, sets out on a journey to the remotest regions of Belarus.
Stranded in a storm en route, he is forced to take refuge in the sprawling castle of Marsh Firs, home of the aristocratic Yanouskaya family. There the teenage Nadzeya Yanouskaya tells Andrey that her family has been cursed for twenty generations and that she, as the last in her family line, has all-consuming visions of a sudden and violent death.
Andrey agrees to help Nadzeya break free from this ancient curse, but as he begins to unravel the secrets of the Yanouskaya family, he too becomes a target of the Wild Hunt, the murderous spectral figures that stalk the Marsh Firs estate.
Andrey must uncover the truth about these otherworldly huntsmen to release Nadzeya from her terrible fate and undo the curse that has marked the noble family for so long.
