The museum opens a cycle of six lectures on Lysenko's creative literary circle — cousin Mykhailo Starytsky, friend Taras Shevchenko, poet Oleksandr Konysky.
In February 2026 the Mykola Lysenko Memorial Apartment Museum opens a new lecture cycle 'Lysenko's Literary Circle'. Six lectures, held every Tuesday during February-March, illuminate those Ukrainian writers whose work directly influenced the formation of Lysenko's operatic-choral legacy. The cycle includes separate portrait lectures: Mykhailo Starytsky (1840-1904) — Lysenko's cousin, playwright, poet, librettist of Taras Bulba, with whom Mykola worked in close collaboration during 1880-1890; Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) — friend of the Lysenko family from the composer's childhood, whose poetic texts became the source for choral cycles (Testament, The Caucasus, The Rapids Roar); Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900) — author of the text of 'Prayer for Ukraine' in 1885, which became the unofficial second anthem of Ukraine.
A separate lecture in the cycle is devoted to how Lysenko consciously chose Ukrainian literary tradition as the foundation of his operatic school — in times of political bans on the Ukrainian word (Valuyev Circular 1863 + Ems Decree 1876). Lysenko's opera became an act of cultural resistance — each premiere (Christmas Night 1873, The Drowned Woman 1885, Natalka Poltavka 1889, Taras Bulba 1880-1890, Eneida 1910) was a public manifesto of Ukrainian national identity. Programme lecturers — philologists of the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine, musicologists of the Kyiv Conservatory. Cross-ref Phase 2.12 + 3.10.
