Jan Kulma, theater and television director, musician, philosopher, writer, Home Army soldier, participant in the Warsaw Uprising, husband of poet Joanna Kulmowa, and co-founder of the Warsaw Chamber Opera, passed away on 30 August 2019. He was born in 1922.
During the Warsaw Uprising, Jan Kulma belonged to the 125th platoon of the second company of Captain Tadeusz Bartoszek “Cegielski”. He took part in the battles for the Botanical Garden and the Gestapo building at Szucha Avenue. After the war, he studied philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He was the artistic director of the National Puppet Theatre Directorate (at the Board of Theatres, Operas and Philharmonics). He and his wife hosted many representatives of the artistic community at their house in Strumiany, and during martial law they sheltered the “renovation team,” a group of oppositionists in hiding. Kulma earned a living by working in churches as an organist, children’s choir conductor and head of the vocal and theater group. He also regularly performed in the Vatican at the invitation of John Paul II.
In 1989, Jan Kulma moved to Warsaw. He directed over 20 theater and opera plays, including Lucifer’s Palace by Karol Kurpiński (Stanisław Moniuszko Opera in Poznań), Karmaniola or from Sas to Las by Stanisław Moniuszko, Charlatan by Karol Kurpiński and In medio vero omnium residet by Jerzy Maksymiuk (Warsaw Chamber Opera).
[Source: polmic.pl]