When This Soprano Says
"Mi Chiamano Mimi"
She Really Means It

Soprano Maria Knapik will be singing the role of Mimi in two versions of "La Boheme" this summer: On July 2 she will be Mimi in the well-known Puccini favorite; on July 30 she will be Mimi in the obscure Leoncavallo version of the opera.

Both performances will be part of the 30th Anniversary Season of the New York Grand Opera Company, which will be marking its third decade of presenting free, fully staged operas in Central Park. The operas, to be conducted by Maestro Vincent La Selva, founder and artistic director of the Opera Company, will be held in Central Park's East Meadow, a new venue for NYGO, which previously performed at the Bandshell and at Rumsey Field's SummerStage.

Maria Knapik in the role of Mimi in "La Boh�me". 
Images are from the live performance on July 2, 2003.
The center image is from a break from rehearsal.

Biography

MARIA KNAPIK
Soprano

      A standout in any crowd for her wind-blown coif of flame-red hair and stunning green eyes, the Hollywood-proportioned Polish beauty Maria Knapik was born to sing.

    And, happily, from birth, Maria Knapik had singing stardom awaiting her for she is the eighth daughter of Poland’s celebrated Knapik family, often compared to Austria’s Von Trapp family of Sound of Music fame.

    Young Maria did not rush into performing:  she was three-and-a-half years old when presented in her debut at a Polish Harvest Festival.  From their not-to-be-stopped applause, the audience made clear that they had never seen anyone, whatever their age, like her.  Her fee:   exactly what she asked her mother for, a chocolate bar.

    Maria liked performing and took the starring role in the family ensemble now renamed “The Eight Knapik Sisters.”   Introduced at the Festival Mondial du Th��tre Nancy to repetitive ovations, they began international tours, with performances as often as three times a day, not only in traditional theaters and concert halls but also in the largest arenas and outdoor stadiums of Europe.  From the age of five, Maria with her sisters regularly appeared on Polish Radio and on Poland’s TV stations in Krakow and Warsaw.
    Everywhere, the youngest Knapik (looking like, and acting with the charm of, Hollywood’s Shirley Temple) was singled out for special adulation, heaped with gifts and bouquets taller than she was.  It was a rare life for a youngster but Maria remembers these performances as happy family outings.
    Like Austria’s Von Trapp Family, the Knapik sisters invariably appeared in the colorful peasant costumes of their home region, their native Krakow -- i.e., wearing starched white aprons tucked around their hand-embroidered, billowing black velvet dresses and, in their hair, crowns of fresh flowers woven into multi-hued ribbon garlands.

    Each of the Knapik sisters sang, danced, and played at least two musical instruments while presenting authentic folk music from their rich Polish heritage of polonaises, mazurkas and polkas.  From the age of seven, Maria played the violin, adding the trumpet to her repertoire when she was thirteen.  Maria made her classical debut in Poland as the soprano soloist with the Lodz Opera Orchestra in 1998 during the annually televised Moniuszko Festival.
           The oldest Knapik sister was sixteen years older than Maria.  And so when Maria was sixteen and nearing college age, her sisters were marrying and having their own families.  Already, they had performed more than 2,800 concerts in tours of Europe and the British Isles, often with audiences of fifteen thousand and more.

    During her elementary and secondary school years in Krakow, Maria maintained honor grades although she often had been excused to tour with her family.  She was interested, too, in poetry reading, art history, linguistics, and physical-fitness games.  (She won one game’s prize with championship stamina:  in eleven minutes exactly, she ran three kilometers, shot five perfect bull’s-eyes at a firing-range target, uncapped a military-type grenade and threw it toward a distant, marked spot, scoring a bull’s-eye!  No one proposed a re-match!)

    Maria’s graduate studies began in Poland at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Vocal and Acting Arts.   Then winning a full scholarship to the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in Aldeburgh, England, she made her debut as a classical soloist in Mozart’s
“Exultate, Jubilate” at the Aldeburgh Festival with the Britten-Pears Orchestra under the direction of Kurt Equiluz. 

Maria also studied voice in Canada at Wilfred Laurier University and was named winner of Montreal’s National Debut Competition for Young Artists, which led to her debut on the SRC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s French Radio Network.  Soon after, on CBC Television, she was profiled on the popular “Rockburn and Company.”  With Ottawa’s Opera Lyra, a member of its Young Artist Program, she was featured in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and in Verdi’s La Traviata and Rigoletto as well as in its annual Opera RSVP.  When named first prize winner at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, she was presented in her debut recital in Italy which was televised nationally.  The summer of 2002, she was heard in her opera debut in the Czech Republic as Musetta in Puccini’s La Boheme and as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

            In her concert debut in the United States, on March 26, 2002, the 175th Anniversary of Beethoven’s death, Maria Knapik was soloist in an all-Beethoven program with the New York Grand Opera Orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall.

    On July 3, 2002, Maria Knapik was heard in her opera debut in the U.S.  She sang the title role in a staged production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at this season’s opening of Opera in New York in New York City’s Central Park to an audience of thousands.

    On September 15, 2002, Maria Knapik was presented in her opera debut in her native Poland, starring in the title role of the rarely performed Stanislaw Moniuszko opera, The
Countess.  The premiere performance was broadcast nationally by the Polish State Radio and State Television from Warsaw.

On January 31, 2003, Maria Knapik sang the title role of Verdi’s eighth and least-performed opera, Alzira, in a Carnegie Hall performance with orchestra.

The summer of 2003, Maria Knapik was not one Mimi but two, first in Puccini’s well-known La Boh�me on July 2 and then, also, on July 30, the all-but-unknown La Boh�me by Ruggero Leoncavallo, recognized today only for his internationally-appreciated Pagliacci.  Each of these new productions, premiered in Central Park’s East Meadow, at 97th Street and Fifth Avenue, were seen/heard by an audience estimated at 15,000.

Anne Midgette, The New York Times critic, judged on August 4, 2003 that Maria Knapik “was the clear star” of the July 30 Boh�me.

On November 1, 2003, on the invitation of Licia Albanese, Maria Knapik was honored and sang as Special Guest during the Annual Puccini Foundation Concert at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. 

Maria on a brief  break from rehearsals of "Alzira" at Carnegie Hall.	Maria performing the title role in Verdi's "Alzira" conducted by Maestro Vincent La Selva.
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