In order to understand this opera story about an abandoned girl, we have to set it in the right context - of a social discord, which at Moniuszko's time led to the bloody Gallician slaughter. Halka is a young woman sustained between two worlds: of the immoral nobility and vengeful highlanders.
There are no unambiguously bad or good characters here. We have Jontek, who comes into conflict with Janusz and exposes his frustration which has nothing to do with a concern about the naive Halka. There is Janusz, who cannot reconcile an official relationship and a pastoral romance. We see Halka, who loses in both cases, outcast by her own community, not flexible enough to meet the requirements of a strange caste. It is not a tearful melodrama. It is a cruel parable of human loneliness.
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