Becoming Carmen: A Journey of a Mezzo Soprano to the Metropolitan Opera

  Becoming Carmen

She was the heroine of the Grimm Brother’s ‘Red Riding Hood’. Clad in red, at the age of four, she sang the room silent. Her perfect pitch at this young age astonished her teachers and her mother. Eventually, she even astonished herself as she forged a career, which led her to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. In 2009, in her native Poland, clad again in scarlet, she inhabited the role of a different heroine; the eponymous Carmen. This achievement was a testament not only to her talent, but also to her ability to face a multitude of wolves with courage and resolve.

Edyta Kulczak has the face of an angel and the heart of a lioness. Her childhood in Poland was framed by a mother’s support and the sound of her father singing from his pew at church. Edyta sang with a band in her church, a defiant act of a visibly political anti-communist during martial law; one of the bleakest periods in Poland’s history. She was a teenager when Solidarność heralded the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe; the walls would come tumbling down, and the story of Edyta’s ascent began.

Becoming an opera singer was not a life long dream or strategic plan. She thought seriously about auditions, but failed entrance exams for intermediate music school in Warsaw. Disappointed, she auditioned for a singing group where an eminent teacher took notice of her. It was the perfect storm. Together they journeyed through the mysteries of vocal style. This time, she would be accepted into vocal studies. While in Warsaw, Edyta was mentored by a prominent contralto who encouraged her unwaveringly and identified her as a mezzo-soprano.

In the true spirit of the self-driven and fiery Carmen, Edyta asked a gypsy fortuneteller about her future in singing. She stated emphatically that Edyta would be traveling the world. After successful throat surgery to remove a polyp, she arrived in Chicago to sing at a friend’s wedding and stayed. Edyta never imagined that she would eventually be preparing for her debut performance as Flora in La Traviata and simultaneously learning parts for Parsifal with Placido Domingo. It is too simple to assume she arrived for a wedding and ended up at the MET, as there is much more to her journey: ferocious competition, financial strain and rejection. Edyta is resilient and optimistic. She laughs when she was cited as the best-dressed woman at a concert:

     “Her concert dress inspired many women in the audience. Red,

       closely fitted, tulip-draped …”

There are still wolves in the forest. Hundreds of thousands of her fellow Polish citizens mourn the death of their president as glassified silica ash drift through the skies. But the heart of the woman in the red dress is not far from the Baltic Sea as she  prepares for her next aria.

Originally published in 'Womanity', a blog by French fashion icon Thierry Mugler.