Ewa Podles, the Polish contralto whose darkly molten, three-octave-plus voice and commanding presence made her a favorite of opera connoisseurs, died Friday in Warsaw. She was 71 years old.
His death, in a hospice, was confirmed by his stepdaughter, Ania Marchwinska, who said the cause was lung cancer.
Fans welcomed Podles (whose full name was pronounced AE-vuh PODE-lesh) not only for her exciting performances, but also for how unusual she was: true contraltos: the lowest type of female voice, deeper than the of a mezzo-soprano. – are not very common.
By developing the low chest register as much as the rest of the voice, a contralto is “like an alto in the lower range, like a soprano in the upper range,” Podles told the New York Times in 1998. And she fit that bill. : Although his tone was brooding and brooding, with a cavernous chest register, he also had the high notes and agility to excel in the most demanding and florid roles of Handel and Rossini.
“It's a very rare voice,” Podles said of his instrument.
And he exercised it with absolute authority. “Never, not even in a recitative moment in any opera, was she anything other than fascinating in her conviction,” director Will Crutchfield, who collaborated with her several times, said in a telephone interview. “She had something to say.”
Ewa Maria Podles was born on April 26, 1952 in Warsaw, daughter of Walery and Teresa (Sawicka) Podles, a member of the Polish National Opera chorus.
“My mother was an extraordinary singer,” Podles told The Times. “She had a very, very deep voice, like a man's. She recorded a little on the radio, but everyone who heard her asked, 'Is she really a woman singing?'”
Podles didn't have to fight for his low grades either. “It's the most natural register of my voice,” he said. “I was born with this voice in my chest. Some people hate chest voice and some people say, 'Oh, it's great.' I adore you.'”
He studied in Warsaw at the conservatory that is now the Chopin University of Music and won the prize at the 1978 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1984, replacing the great mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, another singer with earthy power and dazzling coloratura, in the title role of Handel's “Rinaldo.” (That part, like many of Podles's baroque specialties, was originally written for a male castrato and today is typically sung by a lower-register singer or male countertenor.)
While Podles was not unknown in American opera circles, the repertoire in which she specialized was not standard in American opera houses, and her only appearance at the Met after “Rinaldo” was in 2008 in the small but crucial role of La Cieca. in “La Gioconda” by Ponchielli. Podles became something of a cult figure, one of the singers whose fans go out of their way to travel to hear.
And, like many cult artists, he was not for everyone's tastes. His performance was unashamedly old-fashioned: a sometimes wide-eyed, outstretched-arms embodiment of the stylized, semi-mythical side of opera.
Well-arranged modern singers seek a smooth, unobtrusive flow between the different parts of their voices; Podles enjoyed the breaks between them. As she told The Times, bravely savoring the record of her chest, as she did, is off-putting to some listeners. She said that while the upper and lower ends of her voice were heard easily, the rest of her needed to be developed diligently and that her middle register could be a little breathy.
But for many it was unforgettable. “The sheer, round, sensual beauty of her voice was astonishing,” the eminent pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who toured and recorded with her, said in an interview. “I don't want to make comparisons, but when I worked with Jessye Norman,” the American soprano who died in 2019, “you had the same feeling of this huge sound, enveloping but not penetrating, a wide sound.”
And when elemental intensity was required, as in Mussorgsky's cycle “Songs and Dances of Death,” Podles was ideal.
“It had that gloomy quality,” Crutchfield said. “She could drag you into states of sadness, regret and pain that were overwhelming because of her sincerity and beauty, so you liked to feel bad for her.”
Podles's husband, Jerzy Marchwinski, a noted pianist who interrupted his performing career due to back problems and who was a close advisor to his wife, died in November. In addition to her stepdaughter, Mrs. Marchwinska, he is survived by her and her husband's daughter, Maria Madej, and four grandchildren.
Among a wide repertoire, Podles sang songs by Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff and works with orchestras by Mahler, Brahms, Prokofiev and Penderecki. Her operatic characters extended to Verdi's Azucena and Eboli, Adalgisa in Bellini's “Norma,” Erda in Wagner's “Ring,” and Klytämnestra in Strauss's “Elektra.” Her (she even played the bearded lady Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's “The Rake's Progress”).
Podles last appeared on stage in Barcelona in 2017, as the comically overbearing Marquise de Berkenfield in Donizetti's “La Fille du Régiment.”
“He had that unmistakable quality of a great singer,” Crutchfield said, “of holding the audience absolutely in the palm of his hand.”
