Ewa Maria Podleś was born in Warsaw on 26 April 1952. She studied at the
Warsaw Academy of Music with . repeated at the
Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. She performed the same year at the
Aix-en-Provence Festival as Rosina, and as Adalgisa in Bellini's
Norma in Vancouver. Her voice had a wide
range, spanning more than three
octaves, and was called rare in type and beauty. It appears that her lowest note sung on stage is a B♭2 ("Pour une femme de mon nom" at
La Scala) and her highest is a D6 ("Sudò il guerriero" from
Il Ritorno di Tobia by
Haydn). She also performed and gave a lot of recital, notably with her husband, later with the pianist
Garrick Ohlsson and Anna Marchwiński. In 1996, she sang the role of the Marquise de Berkenfeld in Donizetti's
La fille du régiment at La Scala in Milan, Her return to the Met took place on 24 September 2008, when she sang the role of La Cieca in Ponchielli's
La Gioconda. Podleś's final performance was in
La fille du régiment at
Barcelona's
Liceu in May 2017. On 1 June, she announced that she was pausing her singing career ahead of an upcoming
orthopaedic operation, while continuing to teach and with an intention to return to performing. However, her website listed no further appearances during the remainder of her life. Ewa Podleś was the subject of a 2015 biography,
Ewa Podleś, Contralto Assoluto, written by Brigitte Cormier.
Personal life Podleś and her husband, the pianist , lived in Warsaw. Marchwiński died on 7 November 2023. Podleś died from lung cancer at a hospice facility in Warsaw on 19 January 2024, at the age of 71. == Recordings ==