The awards ceremony was held at the National Opera in Warsaw after Sunday’s performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, a production directed by Mariusz Treliński with sets designed by Kudlička.
Treliński, a leading Polish opera director, also received the same award during the ceremony, alongside renowned poster designer Andrzej Pągowski.
The Treliński-Kudlička production of Madama Butterfly premiered 25 years ago and has won both critical acclaim and an enthusiastic reception among audiences in Poland and abroad.
In 2001, the production was staged at the Washington Opera.
Treliński has served as artistic director of the National Opera in Warsaw since 2008. His career highlights include productions of Szymanowski’s King Roger, Verdi’s Otello and La Traviata, and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
Treliński was the first Polish director to be invited by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he staged a double bill of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta in 2013 and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 2016.
Mariusz Treliński. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell
In all these productions, the sets were designed by Kudlička, who has collaborated with Warsaw's National Opera for three decades.
He has also worked with prestigious international opera houses such as the Met, the Royal Opera House in London, Staatsoper Berlin, Washington Opera, Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Opera, Theater an der Wien, and the Royal Operas in Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Pągowski, a renowned graphic artist, has designed posters for theatre productions, films, festivals and song competitions.
His portfolio includes more than 1,500 posters, in addition to record sleeves, postage stamps, postcards, book illustrations, video clips and stage designs for theatre and television shows.
Pągowski's works are featured in numerous private and state collections, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, where his poster Uśmiech Wilka (Wolf’s Smile) is listed among 100 major works of contemporary art.
Andrzej Pągowski. Photo: Wojciech Kusiński/Polish Radio
(mk/gs)