Mariusz Kwiecien
The young Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien has won accolades worldwide for his handsome voice, incisive musicianship, and strong stage presence. A native of Krakow, he is a former student of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
His operatic engagements have taken him to the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna State Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, and the Glyndebourne Festival, and elsewhere in Europe and the Americas.
He has won prestigious awards in several international vocal competitions, including first prize in the 1994 Breslau International Competition, the Vienna State Opera and Hamburg State Opera prizes in the 1996 Hans Gabor/Belvedere Competition in Austria, and the Mozart Interpretation Prize and Audience Choice Award at the 1998 Francisco Viñas Competition in Barcelona. He was also selected to represent his native Poland in the June 1999 Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff.
He began his professional career with performances as Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Krakow Opera in 1993. In 1995 he sang the title rôle in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in Luxemburg and in Posen, making his Warsaw Opera début the following year as Stanislaw in Moniuszko’s rarely performed Verbum Nobile, and also singing Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. The same year he appeared as Janusz in Moniuszko’s Halka in Toronto under the auspices of the Polish-Canadian Society of Music. Since then his career has developed with performances of leading baritone rôles in major opera houses in Europe and the Americas.
