Ochman, Wieslaw

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Ochman, Wieslaw

Ochman, Wieslaw, Polish tenor; b. Warsaw, Feb. 6, 1937. He studied in Kraków, Bytom, and Warsaw. He made his operatic debut as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor in Bytom (1959), appearing there regularly until 1963, and then sang in Kraków and Warsaw. He subsequently made debuts at Berlin’s Deutsche Opera (1966), the Hamburg State Opera (1967), the Chicago Lyric Opera (1972), the San Francisco Opera (1972), the Paris Opéra (1974), and the Vienna State Opera (1975); made his Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Arrigo in Les Vêpres siciliennes (March 12, 1975). In 1982 he returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Grigori in Boris Godunov. He sang Idomeneo in San Francisco in 1989. In 1996 he portrayed Grigori at the Berlin State Opera. Among his best known roles were those in Mozart’s operas as well as Count Almaviva, Ernesto, the Duke of Mantua, and Cavaradossi.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire