Piercing Voices: Poles on the World's Opera Stages

tomasz_konieczny_portret.jpg, default, Piercing Voices: Poles on the World's Opera Stages, Tomasz Konieczny, photo: http://tomasz-konieczny.eu , center

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Polish singers have powered their way onto the world's greatest opera stages: the Met in New York, Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Opéra Bastille in Paris and the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. They have always taken the audiences of the biggest opera stages by storm.

In the closing decades of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the Reszka family reigned in the halls of La Scala: the bass Edward (who sang at the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida) and the soprano Józefina (famed for her performance as Marguerite in Charles Gounod's Faust). Their brother Jan never sang in Milan, but he did perform on the stages of Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, London and New York.

The Lviv-born singer Teresa Arklowa (1861-1929) travelled from Galicia to Paris in the 1880s and later sang in opera halls throughout Europe – from London to Odessa. She gained her greatest fame in Milan, where she established her own singing school. She was best known for her bel canto singing, but her interpretations of Halka and various Wagner characters also served to guarantee her a place in opera history. Speaking of Wagner, we should also remember the tenor Aleksander Bandrowski (1860-1913), who translated Wagner's libretti into Polish. He was a soloist at the Frankfurt Opera and also performed in Vienna and Milan. He entered the history of Polish opera as the first performer of the title role of Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Manru (a role which he also performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera - this work of Paderewski is to date the only Polish opera ever to be performed on that prestigious stage).

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Several books could be written about Polish singers who made a worldwide opera career. Adelajda Bolska (1863-1930) was most appreciated for her Wagner roles, but she also didn't hesitate to take on lighter roles. She was the chosen soloist of the Tsar's court, and it was thanks to her personal lobbying with Tsar Nikolai II that permission was granted to build the monument to Chopin that stands today in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. Tadeusz Franciszek Bawół, known around the world as Franco Beval (1904-1964), debuted in 1935 in Warsaw's Grand Theatre-National Opera singing Halka, but his career was made at La Scala and Covent Garden (in Poland, he was hardly heard of). Ganna Walska (1887-1984) was seen as a not particularly talented singer, yet she still appeared at the Met alongside the great Caruso. We can find the voices of some of these greats on old phonograph records, but you don't necessarily have to search through antique shops for them, as many of the recordings can now be found on the Internet. But let us now return to the present day.

Konieczny in the USA, Konieczny in Germany

Tomasz Konieczny debuted in New York in 2014, singing the role of Jochanaan in a concert performance of Richard Strauss's Salome at Carnegie Hall. This was just another stop on this singer from Łódź's career trajectory; he had already achieved the heights of the profession several seasons earlier when he performed in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung at the Vienna Staatsoper under the baton of conductor Franz Welser-Möst. From that time on, he was widely recognised as one of the best performers of Wagnerian roles, and he cemented that position with his performance at the Bayreuth Wagner festival. In 2018, he appeared in the premiere of Lohengrin (conductor Christian Thielemann, director Yuval Sharon) playing the role of Frederick of Telramund. The title role was performed by Piotr Beczała. What does it mean to be a Wagner performer? Konieczny explains in his interview with Anna S. Dębowska in Gazeta Wyborcza (Electoral News):

First and foremost, in order to sing Wagner, you have to love him. In the vocal community, Wagner singers belong to the elite, because not everyone can bear the demands this music makes. You have to have a powerful voice that can break through the complex and dense instrumentation of the orchestra. The other thing is that you need to be ready to grapple with the theatrical dialect of the German language, which differs from the commonly spoken language.
Trans. YR

His performance at the Met was the next rung on Konieczny's career ladder, but certainly not the last. In March 2019, he sang the part of Alberich in the Ring of the Nibelung. He also sang the part of Abimélech in Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times wrote the following about his performance in the Rheingold, the first part of Wagner's four-part opera cycle:

The outstanding member of the cast was Tomasz Konieczny, a mighty bass, who, in his groundbreaking debut as Alberich […] with a powerful voice that broke through the orchestra, portrayed Alberich as a scornful and dangerous character.
Trans. YR

Konieczny returned to the stage of the Met in May 2019. On 20th March 2019, he appeared alongside Lech Napierała at the Kościuszko Foundation headquarters in a Polish-language program: Schubert's Winterreise in Stanisław Barańczak's translation, or rather adaptation. The concert was sponsored by the 'Polska Music' program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

It's also worth mentioning Tomasz's brother, Łukasz Konieczny, thirteen years younger, who is making his career in Germany. He has over 50 operatic roles to his name, mostly minor roles, but he is gradually moving into more serious roles. Since the 2011 artistic year, he has been a soloist at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. During the 2017-2018 season, he appeared at the Rhine Opera in Düsseldorf as, among others, Fafner in the Rheingold and Hunding in the Valkyrie. The Polish public might associate him with his role as Dr Behrens in Paweł Mykietyn's Magic Mountain (directed by Andrzej Chyra).

Zubel interprets Heiner Müller's words

Opera theatres continue to thrive on the 19th-century repertoire: the singers mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this article found themselves grappling with the characterisation of the very same figures as do the singers of today. But art demands innovation, too. One of the most respected Polish composers working in the opera context today is also a performer of her own works. In September 2018, Agata Zubel premiered in Bolzano (and later in Vienna and Warsaw) her Bildeschreibung, with a text by Heiner Müller, a subversive representative of post-dramatic theatre.

This is a description of the situation of a woman and man, though it's difficult to detect any kind of plot progression in it: it is at times dramatic, perverse, at times poeticised and unclear. The sung lyrics provide constant commentary to an image which is also created in part by gestures by the musicians. The composer herself wrote about her work:

He and she are trapped in an image, enveloped in the framework of suspended time. Based only on an analysis of this frozen moment, the author creates hypothetical stories that might have led to that moment, in the process performing a detailed analysis of our reality and of timeless existential questions.
Trans. YR

The work was commissioned by Klangforum Wien, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Kurzak with Sony and in Paris

Aleksandra Kurzak was the first Polish woman to sign a contract with the prestigious recording label Decca (part of the Universal entertainment empire). In June 2018, she changed her colours and signed with Sony Classical, one of the biggest music publishers in the world. Her first album with the new label was recorded with her husband, the tenor Roberto Alagna. On the album Puccini in Love, we hear the best-known love arias from operas such as Manon Lescaut, La Faniculla del West, Madame Butterfly or La Bohème.

Kurzak is one of the world's most popular sopranos. In her youth, she won many vocal competitions: in Warsaw, Helsinki, Barcelona and Canton. In 2004, she appeared at the Met and at London's Covent Garden; six years later, she conquered La Scala. During the 2018-2019 season, she sang primarily at the Opéra Bastille, the Met and the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. On 15th June 2019, she will take part in an outdoor performance of Madame Butterfly on Defilad Square in Warsaw.

Beczała sings Jontka at Theater an der Wien

The career of this singer contracted to Deutsche Grammophon has seen success after success. In 2013, Piotr Beczała opened the season at La Scala, and one year later, he received the ECHO Klassik award for the Best Singer of the Year. He regularly performs at the Met, and in 2018, he debuted at the Bayreuth festival and at the Vienna Opera. Piotr Beczała will begin and end the 2018-2019 season with premiere performances at leading Spanish opera houses. He will sing Gounod's Faust at the Teatro Real in Madrid and Verdi's Luisa Miller at the Liceu in Barcelona. In the summer of 2019, he will once again sing the role of Lohengrin in Bayreuth, a part which he performed with sensational success last year.

The most important event, however, will be a present for the Year of Moniuszko: the premiere of the Warsaw version of Halka at the Theater an der Wien. This will be a co-production with the Grand Theatre-National Opera of Warsaw, produced by Mariusz Treliński. Could this be the start of an international career for Stanisław Moniuszko's works?

Originally written in Polish, Mar 2019, translated by Yale Reisner, Jun 2021

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Krzystzof Warlikowski