The preternatural quality of the voice of the Polish contralto Ewa Podleś, who has died aged 71, inevitably divided opinion, but the relative infrequency of her appearances in both London and New York only enhanced the significance of the occasion for her many devoted admirers. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Podleś’ unorthodox vocalism was that her cavernous, all-engulfing instrument – dark, even elegiac in tone – was nevertheless supremely capable of negotiating the virtuoso passagework characteristic of the bel canto repertory in which she excelled.
She was a true “coloratura contralto”, her voice having a low centre of gravity, yet with a range of over three octaves. Nothing more thrilled her audiences than to hear her dipping down deep into the baritonal register, only to sail to a top D at the conclusion of an aria.
Her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, came early in her career, in 1984, entering late into a run of Handel’s Rinaldo to replace Marilyn Horne in the title role. By her own admission it was not a happy occasion, and apart from a second performance in the run and a couple of alfresco appearances in the Met summer series of parks concerts, she was not invited back there for another 24 years. In 2008 she made a triumphant return in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, but in the subsidiary role of La Cieca (Gioconda’s mother).
She was similarly neglected by Covent Garden. Having made a single appearance in Guillaume Tell, in 1990, as the hero’s wife, Hedwige, she was not seen again there for more than two decades, when in 2011 she gave half a dozen performances as Cendrillon’s stepmother, Madame de la Haltière, in Massenet’s opera, utilising her formidable chest to advantage. In 2014 she made a further six appearances as La Marquise de Berkenfeld in the third revival of Laurent Pelly’s staging of Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, similarly deploying her vocal assets to comic effect.
Meanwhile Podleś had been pursuing a successful career in such houses as La Scala, the Liceu in Barcelona, as well as Madrid and Berlin, and also less regularly in Paris, Vienna and at La Fenice, in Venice. She was popular too in the US and Canada, giving recitals and concerts, not least in New York. In Britain she gave acclaimed performances outside London, including a Rinaldo in Birmingham on Christopher Hogwood’s 1999 tour, and as Jocasta in François Girard’s Canadian Opera Company production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex at the Edinburgh festival (2002).
Podleś was born in Warsaw, the daughter of Teresa and Walery Podleś. Her mother, a professional contralto and a member of the chorus of the Polish National Opera, had, according to her daughter, a “very, very deep voice, like a man”. At the age of two, Ewa played Sorrow to the Cio Cio San of Alina Bolechowska in Madama Butterfly and went on to be taught by her at the Warsaw Conservatoire (now the Chopin University of Music). A prizewinner at the 1978 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Moscow, she joined the Teatre Wielki, the Warsaw home of the national opera, the same year. In 1980 she married Jerzy Marchwinski, a pianist and professor at the conservatoire, who accompanied her in recitals and acted as her musical adviser.
In her prime she specialised in Rossini and Handel, dispatching florid runs throughout the register with breathtaking bravura. The enormous stamina required for roles such as Tancredi or Semiramide she took in her stride: “I am singing four and a half hours and it’s no problem.” The title roles of Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Ariodante were also among her favourites, as were the works of Gluck, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and those of her compatriots such as Szymanowski, Moniuszko and Lutosławski. Later in her career she gravitated towards heavier roles such as Verdi’s Azucena and Eboli, Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma, Erda in Wagner’s Ring – the noumenal quality of her Earth Mother rising from the depths made her ideal for the role – and Klytemnestra in Strauss’s Elektra.
Those less enamoured of her highly individual vocalism employed adjectives such as “fruity”, even “overblown” to describe it. Often too those precipitous descents into the chest register could produce a somewhat guttural tone, but it was a sound that Podleś shamelessly deployed for dramatic effect.
In 2003 she was seriously injured when thrown from a car in New Mexico, sustaining multiple wounds from glass and fracturing her collarbone. Despite continuing pain she returned to the stage six months later as Ulrica (Un Ballo in Maschera) in Detroit, later repeating the role in Carnegie Hall. The vigorously corporeal style of acting demanded by modern director’s theatre had never been her forte, but thereafter she of necessity avoided movements that would exacerbate her injury. She nevertheless had a powerful stage presence, inhabiting a role with animated facial expressions and an almost visceral intensity.
Nor was she an advocate of historically informed performance practice, stating: “The interpretations I offer arise from instinct and from the heart.”
Her husband died in 2023. Podleś is survived by their daughter Maria Madej and four grandchildren, as well as her stepdaughter Ania Marchwińska, with whom she collaborated as a recitalist.
• Ewa Podleś, contralto, born 26 April 1952; died 19 January 2024
