Remembering Jan Kiepura

Flowers have been placed at the monument to the famous singer and the house where he was born.

A selection of Kiepura’s most famous arias and songs is on the programme of a concert by the Silesian Chamber Orchestra and Polish soloists.

Kiepura studied law at Warsaw University and took private lessons in singing before making his professional debut in 1924 as Faust in Gounod’s opera.

Two years later he left Poland and developed a spectacular career abroad, singing major operatic parts in Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Buenos Aires and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

He also made a career in films. In 1936, he married the Hungarian-born soprano Marta Eggerth, who turned 100 years old last month. They sang together in many operettas, in concerts and in films until Kiepura’s death in 1966 in Harrison, N.Y. According to his last will, he is buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

Jan Kiepura enjoyed a cult status in Poland.

His visits to Poland, before the war and in 1958 and 1959, evoked enthusiasm, with huge crowds gathering under the hotel where he stayed, listening to their idol singing from the balcony or while standing on the car’s roof. (mk)