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MARIUSz KWIECIEń

David Shengold

Kwiecień sings Don Giovanni in Warsaw this month and releases a new

Slavic Arias disc in January

One night in the mid 1990s, the regulars at Manhattan’s Caffé Taci—a restaurant featuring classical singing—were joined by a handsome young baritone who delivered a sterling account of Aleko’s aria. Taci singers hold to a high standard (several veterans appear at leading American and European theatres) but this baritone’s energy and terrific instrument were clearly something special. Still, one was pleasantly surprised to see the same singer not long afterwards come onstage in the almost imperceptible role of Kuligin in the Metropolitan Opera’s Katya Kabanova: Mariusz Kwiecień, in his first assignment as a member of the company’s Lindemann Young Artists programme. ‘Yes,’ laughs Kwiecień, speaking at the Met in October after a full day of rehearsals for Michael Grandage’s new staging of Don Giovanni, ‘after a few drinks, of course, every blockade was open; one just got up and sang.’

Kwiecień’s journey to the top of his profession has been remarkably rapid and assured for a young man from Kraków who arrived in New York at the age of 23. From the start, he worked with international colleagues (that 1999 Katya involved Charles Mackerras, Catherine Malfitano, Katarina Karnéus, Judith Forst and Eva Randová). He sang small and supporting roles under James Levine, Valery Gergiev, Julius Rudel and Dennis Russell Davies. He has since graced many leading operatic capitals (including Milan, Paris, London, Berlin, Munich, Moscow, Madrid, Tokyo, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco), working with conductors including Colin Davis, Antonio Pappano, Vladimir Jurowski, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Fabio Luisi, Kent Nagano and Edward Gardner. Almost alone among singers I’ve interviewed, Kwiecień ventured not a word (even off the record) against any baton-wielder: ‘I have always had good, helpful conductors; I’ve never had problems.’

The new production promised Kwiecień’s first Met Giovanni, but he has sung the role in many stagings—around 20, he estimates, demanding many varying interpretative strategies. Still, helming a high-profile new Met Don Giovanni production carries with it a certain weight, and the cachet of being an established star: those who have done so in the last century or so include Antonio Scotti (1909), Ezio Pinza (1929), Cesare Siepi (1957), Samuel Ramey (1990) and Thomas Hampson (2004). Hearing that list brought him a happy laugh. Did he have any idea back in his Kuligin days that such a thing might come to pass? ‘Well, yes, actually. I didn’t come to this great theatre to sing

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Opera, December 2011