The oil painting, completed in New York in the late 1940s, depicts the singer in formal evening dress. Chaliapin, son of Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin, produced more than 400 covers for Time between 1942 and 1972 and seldom undertook private commissions.
Handing over the work at a small ceremony in Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki on Thursday night, 74-year-old Marjan Kiepura — a U.S.-based concert pianist — said he hoped the portrait would remind Poles of his father’s “deep love for his homeland,” despite an international career that spanned Vienna, La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera and Hollywood musicals.
Jan Kiepura (1902–1966), a baker’s son from Sosnowiec in southern Poland, became one of the first global media idols, drawing an estimated 40,000 people to a wartime benefit concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1942.
Famous for serenading fans from balcony railings and even taxi roofs, he routinely highlighted his Polish roots, building a modernist villa named Patria in the mountain spa of Krynica in the 1930s.
After his death from a heart attack in the United States, Kiepura was buried at Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery, where some 200,000 mourners lined the streets. Thursday’s event was the first time his portrait has been shown publicly in Poland.
National Opera director Waldemar Dąbrowski called the gift “priceless for our archives” and said it would be displayed in the foyer next to memorabilia of other Polish greats, including conductor Stanisław Moniuszko and soprano Teresa Żylis-Gara.
(mk/jh)
Source: Rzeczpospolita