Mariusz Kwiecień


Mariusz Kwiecień is a Polish operatic baritone who has sung leading roles in the major opera houses of Europe and North America. He has received particular distinction in the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni which he has sung at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna State Opera, Bilbao Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Warsaw Opera, Royal Opera House, London, and Seattle Opera where he won the company's 2006-2007 Artist of the Year award for this role, and the Metropolitan Opera.

Career

Kwiecień studied at the Warsaw Academy of Music and began his professional career as Aeneas in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Kraków Opera in 1993. In 1995 he sang the title role in The Marriage of Figaro in Luxembourg and Poznań, and made his Warsaw Opera debut the following year as Stanisław in Moniuszko's rarely performed Verbum Nobile. Debuts in major European and American opera houses soon followed.
A former student of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, he made his Met debut in 1999 as Kuligin in Janáček's Káťa Kabanová. By 2003 he was singing leading baritone roles there including Marcello in La bohème, Silvio in Pagliacci, Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale, and Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor.
Kwiecień has won awards in several international voice competitions, including the Vienna State Opera and Hamburg State Opera Prizes in the 1996 Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition, and the Mozart Interpretation Prize and Audience Choice Award in the 1998 Francisco Viñas Competition in Barcelona. He was also selected to represent Poland in the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition.

Recordings