Dariusz Machej is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he studied vocal performance under Professor Włodzimierz Zalewski. He also participated in master classes led by Professor Ryszard Karczykowski and William Mateuzzi.
He made his professional debut in 1997 as Don Magnifico in Rossini’s Cinderella at the Warsaw Chamber Opera. He regularly performs at the Polish National Opera, Baltic Opera Gdańsk, Kraków Opera, Grand Theatre Łódź, and Wrocław Opera. He has also made guest appearances at the Poznań Opera House, Polish Royal Opera, Warsaw Chamber Opera, Oper Frankfurt am Main, Wuppertaler Bühnen, Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre, Theater der Stadt Koblenz, and Wienerkammeroper.
His repertoire includes Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and Cosi fan tutte; Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Cinderella, L'italiana in Algeri, Il turco in Italia, La pietra del paragone, and Il viaggio a Reims; Donizetti's L'elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale, and Lucrezia Borgia; Moniuszko’s Halka, The Countess, and Verbum nobile; Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis; Weber's Der Freischutz; Wagner's Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tristan und Isolde.
He has appeared at such festivals as the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Festival de Musique de Strasbourg, Rossini in Wildbad Belcanto Opera Festival (Germany), EBU Summer Festival in Warsaw, Festival di Musica Sacra Anima Mundi in Pisa, Internationalen Maifestspiele in Wiesbaden, International Moniuszko Festival in Kudowa-Zdrój, Warsaw Autumn, Wratislavia Cantans, Bydgoszcz Opera Festival, Adam Didur Festival in Sanok, and Karol Kurpiński International Music Festival in Łomża/Warsaw.
He sang in the world premieres of Kurt Schwertsik's Katzelmacher (Wuppertal, 2003) and Zygmunt Krauze's Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy (Paris, 2004).
In the course of his career Machej has worked with Adam Banaszak, Grzegorz Berniak, Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk, Łukasz Borowicz, Roland Böer, Tomasz Bugaj, Kai Bumann, Gabriel Chmura, Grzegorz Chrapkiewicz, Will Crutchfield, José Maria Florêncio, Patrick Fournillier, Zbigniew Graca, Hilary Griffiths, George Hanson, André Heller-Lopes, Chikara Imamura, Tadeusz Karolak, Jacek Kaspszyk, Michał Klauza, Klime, Tadeusz Kozłowski, Alexander Liebreich, Jean Claude Malgoire, Alessandro de Marchi, Carlo Montanaro, Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski, Grzegorz Nowak, Wojciech Rajski, Carlo Rizzi, Dawid Runtz, Tadeusz Serafin, Ruben Silva, Stefan Soltesz, Simon Standage, Andrzej Straszyński, Tadeusz Strugała, Piotr Sułkowski, Tomasz Tokarczyk, Antoni Wit, Jan Miłosz Zarzycki i Alberto Zedda, Laco Adamik, Kazimierz Dejmek, Beata Redo-Dobber, Achim Freyer, Agnieszka Glińska, Jerzy Gruza, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Peter Mussbach, Ryszard Peryt, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Emilio Sagi, Jitka Stokalska, Jerzy Stuhr, Paweł Szkotak, Cezary Tomaszewski, Mariusz Treliński, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Keith Warner, Johannes Weigand, Marek Weiss, Barbara Wysocka, and Michał Znaniecki.
Dariusz Machej performs extensively in concert, both in Poland and internationally (Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, Lebanon, China, Japan). He was featured on numerous radio and television broadcasts (RAI, Südwestrundfunk, Polish Radio, TVP, Polsat) and recorded for Naxos, ROF, Bongiovanni, DUX, Polish Radio, and the Polish Radio Archives. A recording of Szymanowski’s Hagith he sang on won the Oratorio and Opera Album of the Year Fryderyk Award in 2020.
(photo: private archives)
