Life After Yale: Magdalena Kuźma

One year after graduating from YSM, soprano Magdalena Kuźma ’22MM is an ascendant vocalist appearing on some of the most celebrated stages in the world. Most notably, Kuźma is participating in the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, an opportunity, Kuźma said, to hone skills, undergo “a lot of training,” and perform with one of the world’s most revered companies. In addition to the ongoing experience at the Met, Kuźma has recently performed with the Santa Fe Opera and Orlando Opera, and, this summer and fall, appears at the Glimmerglass Festival and in art-song recitals at Wigmore Hall in London and Merkin Hall in New York—those recitals the result of winning the Concert Artists Guild competition last year. 

“I feel I was super prepared” for this career moment, Kuźma said, reflecting on the transition from graduate-professional-school to full-fledged career. “Yale Opera truly works as a young artist program.” At Yale, Kuźma received “much attention” from faculty, guest artists, and peers. Today, Kuźma is enjoying similar mentorship from the artists and administrators at the iconic Metropolitan Opera. “They’ve really been working hard to get the Young Artists on the stage,” Kuźma said of the company’s leadership. In April, Kuźma sang Giannetta in a Metropolitan Opera production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. It’s a role Kuźma covered at the Met in January and an opera the soprano knows well, having sung Adina in Yale Opera’s May 2022 production. Revisiting the work on the Met’s hallowed stage and working with that iconic company less than a year after graduating from Yale has been nothing less than a dream realized.

A version of this article was published in the Fall 2022/Spring 2023 issue of Music at Yale.