Александра Кужак

Her mother, the soprano Jolanta Żmurko, was also her teacher. Born in Brzeg Dolny in 1977 and brought up in Wrocław, she played violin and piano before taking up singing at the Karol Lipiński Academy there, continuing afterwards in Hamburg. Susanna at the Wrocław Opera was the debut; she joined the Hamburg State Opera's young artists' programme and within a decade sang Gilda, Lucia, Rosina, Adina and Norina at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna State Opera. Her repertoire has since moved into heavier lyric territory — Violetta, Liù, Nedda, Santuzza, and latterly Cio-Cio-San, as well as Tosca at the Metropolitan. She records opera and recital repertoire alike, appears in a long-standing stage partnership with the tenor Roberto Alagna, and has worked with Antonio Pappano, Riccardo Muti and Daniel Oren. Her debut at twenty-one, Susanna at the Wrocław State Opera, had her mother on stage with her as the Countess. She was at the Hamburg State Opera from 2001 to 2007, first for two seasons in its International Opera Studio and then as a soloist, reached the Metropolitan Opera in 2004 as Olympia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Covent Garden in the same season as Aspasia in Mitridate, re di Ponto, and made her La Scala debut as Gilda in February 2010. She is a prizewinner from competitions in Warsaw, Barcelona, Helsinki and Canton, has held an exclusive recording contract with Decca and recorded for Sony Classical, and was given a professorship in music in 2021.