Soprano Kinga Skretkowicz-Ferguson, a native of Lodz, Poland, opened her 2007 season singing Amor in Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, at the Chicago Opera Theater under the baton of Jane Glover, and Grieg's Peer Gynt and Tchaikovsky-Taneyev Romeo and Juliet at the Marion Philharmonic with Alexander Platt conducting. Previously she was seen at the Chicago Opera Theater in Nixon in China, Death in Venice, Il viaggio a Reims, and Agrippina.
In May and June 2007, Kinga performed for the Opera Vista Houston Contemporary Opera Festival, the company she helped to create.
In March 2006, she made her New York debut singing Marie in Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment with the NY Opera of the Highlands. Other roles from her repertoire include Gilda in Rigoletto, Leïla in Les Pêcheurs de Perles, Madame Mao in Nixon in China, Poppea in Agrippina, Contessa in Il Viaggio a Reims, Poussette in Manon, Musetta in La Boheme, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Her recent concert appearances include Exsultate, Jubilate at IU, a solo recital at the Polish Consulate in Chicago, “Voices of Poland” for the Chicago Humanities Festival at the Chicago Symphony Center, and Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, staged by Håkan Hagegård.
Kinga received her Master’s Degree and Performer’s Diploma in Voice from the Indiana University School of Music. At IU Opera Theater she performed the roles of Fiorilla in Il Turco in Italia, Adele in Die Fledermaus, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, and Nicoletta in The Love for Three Oranges. In 2003, she was profiled in a cover story (“Kinga for a Day”) for the IU School of Music alumni magazine, I.U. Music.
In 2001 Kinga won the Marcella Sembrich Vocal Competition; in 2002 she received a Rossi-Lemeni Memorial Award in the Society for Arts and Letters competition. In 2001 she was awarded the prestigious Fellowship for New Americans from The Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation, for which she is now serving as a selection panelist; she has also received two Kosciuszko Foundation scholarships (in 2001 and 2002). Kinga holds an Artist’s Diploma in Piano from the Lodz State School of Music, Poland, an MA in English from the University of Lodz, and an MBA from the University of Lyon.
In the 1990s, Kinga toured extensively in Europe and South America with the award-winning chamber ensemble Con Vigore, performing repertoire ranging from Renaissance to contemporary music. A keen and adventurous actress, she was a member of the experimental theater group Cacho Perro and performed leading roles in professional theaters in Poland, at the Gdansk Theater Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She honed her acting skills at the Academy of Music Opera and Drama Department and during a series of workshops with The Royal Shakespeare Company.
