Maciej Prus, a renowned actor, director of theater and opera, and artistic director of several theaters, passed away at the age of 85. He was awarded the Silver and Gold Cross of Merit and the Gloria Artis Medal for his contributions to the arts.
Throughout his career, he directed numerous operas such as Stanisław Moniuszko’s “The Haunted Manor” and also staged plays by Shakespeare, Wyspiański, and Samuel Beckett.
Born in 1937 in Sambor, Poland, Prus graduated from the Acting Department of the PWST in Krakow in 1961 and the Directing Department of the PWST in Warsaw in 1968. He was associated with Krakow theaters in the 1960s, and later in Koszalin. During this time, he was also a director at the Ateneum Theater in Warsaw and the Wojciech Bogusławski Theater in Kalisz. In the 1977/1978 season, he was the artistic director and director of the Musical Theater in Słupsk.
From 1980 to 1982, he served as the artistic director of the Wybrzeże Theater in Gdańsk. In the following years, he was mainly associated with the Stefan Jaracz Theater in Łódź and the Dramatic Theater in Warsaw, where he served as artistic director from 1990 to 1993. In the following years, he worked with many Polish theaters, directing plays in the Polish Theater in Warsaw, the National Theater, the Juliusz Słowacki Theater in Krakow, the Polish Theater in Wrocław, the Polish Theater in Poznań, and the Polish Theater in Bydgoszcz.
Prus was also known for directing several operas such as Stanisław Moniuszko’s “The Haunted Manor,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Karol Szymanowski’s “King Roger,” Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” In recent years, he directed productions at the Grand Theater in Łódź and the Opera in Bydgoszcz. He also worked for Television Theater.
Prus received numerous theater awards, including the Ministry of Culture and Art Award (1973), the Konrad Swinarski Award for the 1978/1979 season, the main prize at the 16th Opole Theater Confrontations for directing Stanisław Wyspiański’s “Liberation” at the Jaracz Theater in Łódź, the Golden Yorick Award for Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” at the Polish Theater in Warsaw as the best Shakespearean production of the 1993/94 season, and the Golden Mask Award (2003, 2005).