The Baltic Opera Festival was created in Tricity on the initiative of the outstanding Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny. The desire to use the incredible space of the Sopot Forest Opera was born in 2009, when the artist appeared on this stage for the first time in Rheingold by Richard Wagner. When initiating the Festival, he referred to the pre-war tradition of staging opera works, thanks to which Sopot was called the Bayreuth of the North in the 1930s.
The festival, which took place for the first time in July 2023 on the stages of the Forest Opera in Sopot and the Baltic Opera Theatre in Gdańsk, included the presentation of premiere opera productions with the participation of outstanding soloists, conductors and producers from Poland and around the world.
The idea of the Festival is also to build spaces to develop international cooperation and promote educational activities. The Baltic Opera Festival 2023 has started a cyclical celebration of the art of opera, addressed to both music lovers and the general audience from all over Europe.
The organizers of this new event on the opera map of Poland were two institutions, i.e. the Baltic Opera Theatre in Gdańsk and the National Cultural Center.
The organization of the first edition of the Baltic Opera Festival – Baltic Opera Festival was co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
At its core, the Baltic Opera Festival follows from my dream of making full use of the wonderful possibilities and world-class potential of the Forest Opera in Sopot, an extraordinary open-air venue with a history dating back to 1909.
Tomasz Konieczny studied acting at the Łódź Film School, followed by vocal studies at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and the Carl Maria von Weber Dresden University of Music under Professor Christian Elßner. He specialises in German music. His extensive career has taken him to the world’s top stages, including: Oper Leipzig, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Paris Opera, Carnegie Hall, Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, National Theatre of Japan in Tokyo, or Bayreuth Festival. In 2019, at the request of the leadership of the Wiener Staatsoper, he received the highest professional award in the German-speaking opera world: the title of the Österreichischer Kammersänger. In 2022, in recognition for his outstanding contribution to the development of Polish culture, he was presented with the Gold Gloria Artis Medal for Merits to Culture by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.
