Tomasz Konieczny
Bass-baritone, graduate of the Acting Department of Łódź Film School; actor, director, and opera singer.
He performs in the world’s major opera houses such as Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Salzburger Festspiele, the Bayreuther Festspiele (Wotan in Wagner’s Die Walküre, 2021), and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper. He made his artistic home for many years at Vienna’s Staatsoper, where in 2019 he was awarded the title of Kammersänger (the highest honorific title for distinguished singers in the German-speaking world) and in 2018 – an honorary Austrian citizenship. In Vienna Konieczny has sung the leading roles in nearly two hundred operatic spectacles. He has won fame for his performances of the German-language repertoire, including Wagner, Strauss, Berg, and Hindemith.
He collaborates with the greatest living composers. His repertoire includes such operatic part as Wotan and Alberich (in Wagner’s Ring cycle), Amfortas (Parsifal), Jochanaan (Salome), Barak (Die Frau ohne Schatten), Scarpia (Tosca), Wozzeck, Friedrich von Telramund (Lohengrin), Jack Rance (La fanciulla del west), Mandryka (Arabella), Janusz (Halka), Cardillac, and many others.
He has collaborated with such celebrities as Kent Nagano, Marek Janowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Franz Welser-Möst, Zubin Mehta, Adam Fischer, Christian Thielemann, Peter Schneider, and Ricardo Chailly.
He is also an excellent performer of oratorios and chamber music, including songs by Rachmaninov, Strauss, Mahler, Beethoven, Penderecki, Twardowski, Moniuszko, Schubert, Mussorgsky, Górecki, Baird, and Czyż. His extensive audio and video discography includes two recordings of The Ring (under Janowski and Thielemann) as well as solo albums.
Phot. Igor Omulecki