Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny has unveiled his plans for the inaugural Baltic Opera Festival in July.

The renowned Wagnerian and star of the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Vienna State Opera and the Bayreuth Festival talks to Limelight about the ambitious project, which he hopes will soon take its place alongside the festivals in Salzburg, Bregenz and Aix-en-Provence.

Tomasz Konieczny at the Forest Opera in Sopot, Poland. Photo © K. Mystkowski / KFP

During the interwar period, the annual Wagner Festival in Sopot, Poland, became a mainstay of the European cultural calendar. Its monumental, outdoor productions drew audiences from far and wide. In 1936, it broke records when over 30,000 people filled the bleachers.

But the festival faded into obscurity after World War II. Its purpose-built, open-air amphitheatre – the Forest Opera – became the venue for propaganda concerts of the communist state, as well as the annual Sopot Music Festival, which attracted artists from both sides of the Iron Curtain in a celebration of pop music.

Now, with Konieczny as artistic director, opera will once again take centre stage. Does he hope to restore the Wagnerian credentials of Sopot, which once saw the...