Powązki Cemetery

This guide to Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw follows composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, who arrived in 1858 to conduct the National Opera's orchestra and spent fifteen years composing at a punishing pace while struggling financially, kept afloat by his wife's dowry rather than his own earnings. It traces his opera Halka, which made him one of Poland's most beloved cultural voices, and the sudden end to his career in 1872 at his heart's failure. Stand at his grave, near the avenues of ornate nineteenth-century tombs nearby.