Aleksander Bardini

Biography

Aleksander Bardini (17 November 1913 – 30 July 1995) was a Polish actor, theatre director, artistic director, and educator.Born in Łódź to a Jewish family, after finishing high school in 1932 he studied violin and performed in the string quartet of the Jewish Music Association as well as in a Jewish cabaret. In 1935 he graduated from the Acting Department of PIST in Warsaw.He worked as an actor at the Municipal Theatre in Wilno (Vilnius) (1935–1936) and at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw (1938). In 1939 he joined the COP Travelling Theatre. For the 1939/40 season he was engaged by the Municipal Theatres in Lwów (Lviv), where he remained until 1941, working as both actor and director.During the German occupation he was initially in the Lviv ghetto, then hid in a private apartment. He returned to the Polish Dramatic Theatre in Lviv in 1944, where he served as a member of the artistic council, director, actor, and head of the acting studio until the company’s evacuation in August 1945.In the 1945/46 season he moved with the Lviv ensemble to the Municipal Theatre in Katowice. He had planned to join the Polish Army Theatre in Łódź for the 1946/47 season, but after the Kielce pogrom in July 1946 he decided to emigrate. Between 1946 and 1950 he lived in the USA, Canada, and West Germany, working manual labour and collaborating with the Jewish theatre in Munich.He returned to Poland in 1950. Until 1957 he worked as a director at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw. His greatest achievement of that period was the first postwar staging of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve). He also occasionally appeared as an actor.In the 1957/58 season he was artistic consultant and director at the Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Łódź. From 1958 to 1960 he served as director and artistic manager of the Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw. Between 1960 and 1964 he was an actor and director at the Contemporary Theatre (Teatr Współczesny) in Warsaw, before returning to the Polish Theatre for the 1964/65 season. Afterwards he worked as a freelance director, staging productions in Poland and abroad.He also directed opera productions (he was a great lover and connoisseur of music). He frequently collaborated with Polish Television, hosting highly popular music programmes featuring amateurs.A talented and very popular educator, from 1950 to 1982 he taught at the Acting, Variety, and Directing Departments of the Warsaw State Theatre School (later also in Łódź). He became associate professor in 1950 and full professor in 1966. He also taught at the Warsaw Academy of Music, co-directed and lectured at summer music courses in Austria and the Netherlands, at the drama department of the University of Georgia (USA), and at the music-drama school in Stockholm.He held many positions in ZASP (Polish Actors’ Association), ZAiKS (authors’ society), and the Jewish Historical Institute (member of the scientific council).He was the father of Maria Bardini, editor and producer of Television Theatre productions.He died in Warsaw and was buried in the catacombs at the Old Powązki Cemetery.