Brett Polegato Baritone

Brett Polegato's artistic sensibility has earned him the highest praise from audiences and critics: “his is a serious and seductive voice” says the Globe and Mail, and the New York Times has praised him for his “burnished, well-focused voice” which he uses with “considerable intelligence and nuance.” He appears regularly on the world's most distinguished stages in nineteen countries, including those of Lincoln Center, La Scala, the Concertgebouw, the Opéra National de Paris, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the Teatro Real, Roy Thomson Hall, the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, and can be heard as soloist in the Grammy Awards’ Best Classical Recording of 2003 - Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony (Telarc) with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano.

Brett Polegato opens the Canadian Opera Company’s 2009/2010 season as Sharpless, his role debut, in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. In November, he heads to Vancouver to take part in Vancouver Opera’s 50^th Anniversary Gala Concert. He spends the winter in Oslo, where he performs one of his signature roles, Il Conte Almaviva, in a new production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. The New Year begins with a series of performances of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Colorado Symphony, and is followed in March by a lieder concert with the Aldeburgh Connection to mark the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Hugo Wolf. After successful performances of Winterreise last season, he will perform the monumental work again - this time in Montréal with pianist, Liz Upchurch. In May, he sings another of his signature roles, the title role in Don Giovanni, for Calgary Opera. Following these performances, he makes his debut with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with Robert Spano, conducting, and then travels immediately to Ottawa, to sing Lescaut in a concert performance of Manon for Opera Lyra. He concludes the season in Toronto, where he makes a return appearance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

In 2008/2009, Brett Polegato opened the Canadian Opera Company’s season singing the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. His performance was lauded by critics and audiences alike. In November, he performed one of his signature roles, the title character in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, in a new production for Vancouver Opera. Between recital appearances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and Rockefeller University in New York City, he travelled to Boston to sing Handel’s Messiah with the Handel and Haydn Society and, later in December, with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir in Toronto. Following these performances, he travelled to Naples for the re-opening of the Teatro di San Carlo, singing Ned Keene in Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes with Jeffrey Tate conducting. In February, he appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in performances of Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony. His season culminated in his first essay of Schubert’s monumental cycle, Winterreise, with pianist Stephen Ralls, for the Aldeburgh Connection in Toronto.

One of today’s most sought-after lyric baritones on the operatic stage, Brett has made a name for himself in a number of dramatic roles, most notably the title roles in Eugene Onegin, which his has sung at the Canadian Opera Company, the New Israeli Opera and Vancouver Opera & Don Giovanni. He has appeared frequently in the title role of Pelléas et Mélisande, including new productions at the Strasbourg’s Opéra National du Rhin, at the Leipzig Opera conducted by Marc Minkowski, and in Munich with Marcello Viotti. Pelléas was also the role which marked his Paris Opera debut in September of 2004. Another of his signature roles is Il Conte Almaviva in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, which his has sung to great acclaim for companies that include New York City Opera, L’Opéra de Montréal and Michigan Opera Theater. He has appeared with the Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra de Genève, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opéra National de Toulouse, Teatro Real in Madrid, Saito Kinen Festival, Florence’s Maggio Musicale, Vlaamse Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver Opera and Calgary Opera in over 50 roles, including Oreste (Iphigénie en Tauride), Zurga (Les Pêcheurs de Perles), Yeletsky (Pique Dame), Valentin (Faust), Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Dandini (La Cenerentola), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), and Wiedhopf in Braunfel’s Die Vögel,

Equally at ease on the concert and recital stages, Mr. Polegato made his Carnegie Hall recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in May 2003 with pianist, Warren Jones, and returned the following year with the Atlanta Symphony to reprise their Grammy Award winning performance of A Sea Symphony. He is a frequent guest artist with the Bayerisher Rundfunkorchester in Munich and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared with most every major U.S. and Canadian orchestra. In 2005, he made his highly-acclaimed debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, in a programme which included Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Fauré’s Requiem.

He has appeared as soloist with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast at Wolf Trap, the Chicago Symphony in the U.S. premiere of Saariaho’s Cinq Reflets, the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mahler orchestral lieder, the Toronto Symphony in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, he returned to the London BBC Proms for a concert performance of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with Gianandrea Noseda conducting, and rejoined the National Symphony Orchestra at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem. He has performed Handel's Messiah with the Toronto Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis, and with the Handel & Haydn Society under Andrew Parrott. As a recitalist, Mr. Polegato appears frequently throughout North America and Europe, and is particularly noted for his programming choices and wide range of repertoire.

Brett's discography shifts as seamlessly through genres as his live appearances. His recordings include the Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony, his critically praised solo disc, To A Poet, with pianist Iain Burnside, on CBC Records, an Analekta-Fleur de Lys disc of Bach's popular Coffee and Peasant Cantatas with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and a live period-instrument performance of Messiah with the Handel & Haydn Society on Arabesque Recordings. In March 2000, CBC Records released a disc entitled Opera Encores that joined him with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra led by Richard Bradshaw. His opera recordings include Emmerich Kálmán's Die Herzogin von Chicago (Decca) with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Gluck's Armide with Les Musiciens du Louvre, on the Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label.

Brett is represented exclusively by Simon Goldstone at IMG Artists.

November 2009

Date Last Edited: 30th November 2009