Adam Kiss Biography
"Work until you can't make it better. Then make it better." -Adam Kiss
Adam Kiss...
Adam Kiss is an award-winning actor and singer, equally at home in film, theatre, opera, concert, or musical. Adam won the award for Best Actor at both the Dubai Independent Film Festival, and the Europe Film Festival both for his Film "Now I Am Alone". He defended his win at the Europe Film Festival in 2022 by winning the award for Best Actor for his Film "The Man Who Thought He Was King". In addition, Adam has won nearly twenty other awards and nominations at international film festivals including from London Shorts, Liftoff at Pinewood Studios, The London Indie Short Film Festival, The Golden Harvest Film Festival in Tokyo, LIMF Festival in London, Athens International Monthly Film Festival, San Francisco Indie Short Festival, Florida Shorts Film Festival, The Hollywood International Golden Age Festival, and others! As a singer gaining international acclaim, he has performed the title role of Figaro in excerpts from Le Nozze di Figaro with orchestra under the baton of Metropolitan Opera Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin at the 2,500 seat Verizon Hall in Philadelphia. Adam has won numerous prizes and awards from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and has sung several times in the Metropolitan Opera’s List Hall. Possessing both a Master’s and Professional Studies Degree from the renowned Curtis Institute of Music, which is one of the most selective colleges in the world, Adam earned his Bachelor of Music degree from New York City’s illustrious Manhattan School of Music, and also attended the eminent American Academy of Dramatic Arts, also located in New York City
Adam’s Youtube and Social Media Page Links Below!
Adam's full bio is below!
“Adam Kiss was crowd-pleasing Leporello… He certainly delivered the goods.”
– David Fox, Parterre Box
Adam Kiss...
Adam has performed leading roles with professional opera companies, including several roles with Opera Philadelphia, one of the leading opera companies in the entire United States. He alternated as Leporello and Commendatore to universal critical acclaim in Opera Philadelphia’s 2019 new production of Don Giovanni. Philadelphia Critic Ralph Malachowski wrote of Adam Kiss’ performance as Leporello:
“Adam Kiss as Leporello was outstanding! He commanded the stage with presence and fine singing…Mr. Kiss as Leporello, for instance, was at one point required to drag himself from the wings to centerstage while lying down using only his elbows before launching into an aria. When Leporello exchanges clothes with his master, Mr. Kiss looked dashing in his pierrot costume. It was the best looking costume that evening.”
Additionally, In February of 2020, Adam was chosen as one of the 17 greatest and most promising young singers in the world who were invited to perform in Houston, Texas, leading up to Houston Grand Opera’s famous Concert of Arias competition. Additionally, Adam has performed with the New York City Opera at the magnificent New York City Center Theatre. In May of 2020, Adam was scheduled to Perform in Elektra once again under the baton of conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin alongside fellow castmate Christina Goerke and Jay Hunter Morris in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, when the production was cancelled due to the international pandemic and performance restrictions.
A dramatic baritone and a Verdi baritone, roles that are the staples of Adam’s repertoire, and which he has learned in their entirety are roles such as Rigoletto in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth, Rodrigo the Marquis of Posa in Verdi’s Don Carlo, Iago in Verdi’s Otello, Don Giovanni in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen, Figaro in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohéme, Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca, and many others. Additionally, roles that Adam has performed in professional productions in theatres include Bartolo in The Barber of Seville, Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd, Prince Gremin in Eugene Onegin, King Arkel in Pelléas et Mélisande, Jimmy in Mahagonny: Ein Songspiel, L’Arbre in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, A Mourner in A Quiet Place, Il Maggiordomo in La Rondine, and many others.
In addition to roles in operas, musicals, and plays, Adam is an avid recitalist. While attending college at Manhattan School of Music, Adam performed 8 solo recitals, and while a student at the Curtis Institute he likewise performed many solo recitals both in Philadelphia and at various other locations. Adam believes that it is in the recital that you see the true soul and worth of an artist, without the camouflage of a character and costume. It is also the place where the artist has the most freedom. For this reason, the recital is Adam’s favorite medium. In addition to perfoming arias from operas, and pieces from musical theatre at his concerts, Adam is a great promoter of song repertoire. Having performed well over 200 different songs in concert, Adam is in particular fond of song cycles. In German lieder, Adam has performed many of the great masterpieces of song, including the entire Schubert Winterreise, Schumann Dichterliebe and Liederkreis Op. 24 and Op. 39, Brahms Vier Ernste Gesänge, Beethoven An Die Ferne Geliebte, as well as countless other gems of the lieder repertoire not part of a cycle. In English songs, Kiss has performed several British song cycles including Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Songs of Travel and Five Mystical Songs, as well as Gerald Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring, while on the American side of English-language song cycles he has performed John Jacob Niles’ Gambler’s Songs and 5 Sea-Chanties arranged by Celius Dougherty. For Russian repertoire, he has performed Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death countless times, as well as several cycles and songs by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. As far as French mélodie is concerned, Kiss has performed much of the vocal works of Gabriel Fauré, and Charles Gounod, two giants of french vocal music. In Italian, Adam is a champion of famed song composer Francesco Paolo Tosti, among many others. These cycles, in addition to hundreds of songs not in a cycle, comprise Adam’s staple song repertoire. One particular recital that Kiss has performed with and toured in several locations is his famed all-Shakespeare recital, which is comprised of arias from Shakespeare operas, songs set to Shakespeare’s text, pieces of musical theatre from Shakespeare-inspired musicals, and monologues and soliloquies from the Shakespeare plays themselves. While touring with this program and being invited by Villanova University to perform the program for their student body in the grand St. Thomas of Villanova Church, the Villanovan Newspaper wrote of Adam:
“Kiss’s every unfaltering note was able to strike the bottom of the audience’s heart. His singing brought the characters in Macbeth to life and provided an outline of the tragic yet soul-stirring story…Kiss gave a vibrant performance in his last song, “Where Is The Life That Late I Led?” From Kiss Me, Kate, acting out the frustration when the character’s newlywed wife refused to kiss him at their wedding.”
Originally beginning his training at the age of 14, Adam was first catgeroized as a bass and continued singing for several years in that voice catgory. However, after the richness and brilliance of his upper register and ease in the higher tessitura was discovered, Kiss transitioned to baritone. He is a dramatic baritone, and Verdi baritone, but also performs Musical Theatre and many styles of music. He has performed extensively internationally, in addition to his many performances within the Unites States. Having performed notably at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Adam has also performed in various locations in Germany, Austria, Greece, Sicily, and Turkey. In the United States, Adam has been a frequent performer at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall and Perelman Theatre in Philadelphia. Adam has also performed at the famed Academy of Music in Philadelphia, as well as the Prince Theatre in the same city. In New York City he has performed at Greenfield Hall, Steinway Hall, St. John the Divine Cathedral, The historic and grand New York City Center Theater, The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, and many other locations, not to mention the various other cities he has performed in within America, including Washington D.C., New Haven, Connecticut, Boston, Reading, P. A. and many others.
In his career so far, Adam has worked with countless eminent conductors including Metropolitan Opera Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Former New York City Opera Music Director Jayce Ogren, Opera Philadelphia Music Director Corrado Rovaris, famed pianist and Conductor Philippe Entremont, as well as other famed conductors including Kent Tritle, Christian Capocaccia, Timothy Myers, and many more. He has worked extensively with several famed directors at the forefront of their field, including Tony-winning director Daniel Fish, R. B. Schlather, Emma Griffin, and Stephanie Havey. Adam has also performed in masterclass for opera star Angela Meade to great acclaim.
David Fox of Parterre Box wrote of Adam:
“Adam Kiss was a crowd-pleasing Leporello, very much in the buffo-basso tradition-he cerntainly delivered the goods.”
In addition to singing, Adam is also an accomplished actor. Having attended the world-renowned American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, where such actors as Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Robert Redford all trained, Kiss performed in numerous plays and scenes at the venerable establishment, including the leading roles of Dalton Chance in The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Teddy in Painted Rain, Wallace Kirkman in Women and Wallace, as well as Mack the Knife “Macheath” in excerpts from Kurt Weill’s The Threepenney Opera and Frank Butler in scenes from Annie Get Your Gun. At Manhattan School of Music, he performed the leading role of Lee in excerpts from Sam Shepard’s classic play True West. He has also performed excerpts and scenes from several Shakespeare plays, and includes monologues in many of his vocal recitals. Adam even performed Shakespeare monologues in a masterclass at Shakespeare’s house in Stratford-upon-Avon. Adam is also an expert in accents and dialects, and some of the accents firmly in his repertoire are British (Almost all types, including Royal and Cockney), French, Italian, Australian, Scottish, and most types of Continental American accents. In addition, aside from English, Mr. Kiss is fluent in Hungarian, and conversational in French, German, and Italian after studying these languages extensively on his own and in preperation for singing in all of these languages. In diction, Adam was taught by the top diction teachers and coaches in the world in all of the aforementioned languages, and additionally in Russian diction.
Many have remarked in awe on the power of Kiss’s voice and dramatic interpretations. Adam, coming from his Shakespearean acting background, believes that the performance and acting are equally as important as the music and the vocal production itself. He is a true artist who uses and perfects every aspect of his craft, from the voice, music, and text, to his meticulous research on the composer, and poet or librettist. Possessing a powerhouse voice, an incredibly magnetic performance presence, and standing at 6 feet 8 inches tall (over 2 meters) many critics have commented on the power of Kiss’s performances and stage presence. This combination of raw magnetism and power, combined with intellect to back it up and artistry to interpret and make a piece his own, is an incredible combination that is rarely seen. Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Enquirere remarked on Adam’s artistic and intelligent interpretations when he said: “…Adam Kiss was Leporello, bringing vivid humor and fear into his voice.”
Susan Gould of Bachtrack reamrked of Kiss’s vocal and physical presence: “Adam Kiss was a sonorous commendatore, repeatedly materializing to his bereft daughter….”
In addition to singing and acting, Adam is a true Renaissance man in that he is an accomplished writer and poet. He has written a novel, several short stories, and poems of various types and lengths. As a freshman in high school after joining the debate team he was immediately placed into the seniors varsity upperclassmen debate team after an undefeated record, and due in large part to his voice, intelligence, and powerful public speaking abilities. He was athletically trained in both tennis and fencing, which has helped in his ability to convincingly portray stage combat on several occasions, notable in Don Giovanni and The Barber of Seville.
Born in Cresskill, New Jersey, a close inner-ring suburb of New York City just a few miles from the George Washington Bridge, Adam grew up with music in the house, as both his parents were pianists. His mother, Christina Kiss, is an internationally acclaimed concert pianist and one of the world’s foremost expert in the music of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Growing up, Adam knew that he was going to be a performer, and started acting in plays, as well as in high school musicals. Playing Mr. MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie, and Sir Evelyn Oakleigh in Anything Goes, in which he played an uppercrust British aristocrat, accent and all. Discovering in musicals that he had a voice, Adam began voice lessons at the age of 14. He graduated a year early by finishing his last 2 years of high school online in a single year with Indiana University High School, after which he attended the top conservatories in the world, and received the greatest training in the world. As a child, Adam was taught both piano and clarinet, becoming proficient in both. Adam made his stage debut at Carnegie Hall at 2 months old when his mother carried him out on stage after one of her Carnegie Hall solo recitals. He hasn’t stopped performing since!
