To mark the occasion, the Mazovian Music Theatre in Warsaw has mounted an exhibition documenting Kiepura’s life and career in photographs, newspaper clippings, films and vinyl records.
Events include the screening of a 1935 German movie entitled Ich liebe alle Frauen (I Love All Women), one of 12 films starring Kiepura, and a musical show featuring a selection of his greatest prewar hits.
Born in 1892 in Sosnowiec, southern Poland, Kiepura was a baker’s son. He studied music against the will of his parents, who wanted him to become a lawyer.
While studying law at the University of Warsaw, he took vocal lessons with some of the musical celebrities of 1920s Warsaw.
He made his operatic debut as Faust in Gounod’s opera in Lviv in 1925. A year later, he went to Vienna and appeared as Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca at the city’s Staatsoper.
Kiepura subsequently developed a spectacular career, with performances in Berlin, Milan’s La Scala, the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as on Broadway and in films.
He often performed alongside his wife, the Hungarian singer and actress Marta Eggerth.
One of the first idols of mass culture, Kiepura attracted a crowd of more than 40,000 to his 1942 concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
To please his fans, he often sang standing on taxi roofs and from balconies. He always stressed his Polish roots and his love for his hometown of Sosnowiec. In the 1930s, he had his only Polish home, a luxurious villa named Patria, built in the mountain spa of Krynica.
Kiepura died on August 15, 1966, of a heart attack, at his residence near New York, two days after a concert for Polish Americans in Port Chester.
In line with his last will, he was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw. His funeral was reportedly attended by some 200,000 people.
(mk/gs)