Tomasz Konieczny
One of the world’s greatest bass-baritones specialising in German music. Over the years his reputation has grown thanks to his excellent performances at the Wiener Staatsoper, where he has been singing since 2009, as well as thanks to three Wagner albums recorded under the baton of Christian Thielemann (Der Ring des Nibelungen / Alberich), Marek Janowski (Der Ring des Nibelungen / Wotan), and Sir Simon Rattle (Das Rheingold / Alberich).
He studied acting at the Leon Schiller National Film School in Łódź, solo singing at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, in the class of Christian Elßner. He made his acting debut in Andrzej Wajda’s film The Crowned-Eagle Ring, and has subsequently appeared in numerous Polish film, TV and theatre productions. He also worked as a theatre director.
Tomasz Konieczny has held scholarships from, inter alia, the Minister of Culture and Art (1997) and the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung (1998–2000). He received Second Prize in the International Antonín Dvořák Singing Competition in Karlovy Vary (1998) as well as the Arnold-Petersen-Preis for outstanding artistic achievements at the Nationaltheater Mannheim (2004). On the initiative of the management of the Wiener Staatsoper the singer was awarded the prestigious title of Österreichischer Kammersänger (2019).
He first appeared on the opera stage in the role of Figaro in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Grand Theatre in Poznań (1997). His first performance in Germany was as Kecal in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride at the Oper Leipzig (1999), and this paved the way for appearances in the most important opera theatres of Europe, North America and Asia. And in 2019, he enjoyed a triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Alberich in Wagner’s Das Rheingold to the great acclaim of the critics and the audience alike.
The artist’s rich repertoire encompasses all the parts from the operas of Richard Wagner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss, as well as those by Giuseppe Verdi, Benjamin Britten, Dmitri Shostakovich and Claude Debussy. He also performs oratorios and songs. In addition, he has sung under the baton of such eminent conductors as Ádám Fischer, Antoni Wit, Peter Schneider, Christoph Eschenbach, Kent Nagano and Franz Welser-Möst. He has been invited to perform at numerous prestigious festivals, including in Salzburg, Bayreuth, Edinburgh, Warsaw and other cities.
[2022]