About this Artist
Baritone BRETT POLEGATO has already appeared on several of the world's most distinguished stages in 19 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, and Carnegie Hall, and participated as soloist in the Grammy-winning Best Classical Recording of 2003 - Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony (Telarc) with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano.
In the 2006/07 season, Polegato will return to the Opéra National de Lyon for the role of the Heerufer in Lohengrin. Other operatic appearances in the current season include Dandini in La Cenerentola at Calgary Opera, Valentin in Faust at Canadian Opera Company, Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos at Geneva Opera, and Yeletsky in Pique Dame at Vlaamse Opera. On the concert platform he will appear with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Hannover, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Polegato appears frequently as Pelléas in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, including new productions at Strasbourg's Opéra National du Rhin, at the Leipzig Opera conducted by Marc Minkowski, and in Munich with Marcello Viotti. In 2000 he made his La Scala debut as Ned Keene in Peter Grimes, and he made his Chicago Lyric Opera debut the previous season singing Peter Niles in Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra.
Equally at ease on the concert and recital stages, 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 Bayerischer Rundfunkorchester in Munich and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, as well as with most major U.S. and Canadian orchestras.
Polegato's discography shifts as seamlessly through genres as his live appearances. Recordings, in addition to A Sea Symphony, include 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 by the Handel & Haydn Society on Arabesque. In March 2000, CBC Records released a disc entitled Opera Encores that joined him with tenor Benjamin Butterfield and the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra led by Richard Bradshaw. His opera recordings include Emmerich Kálmán's jazz-infused operetta Die Herzogin von Chicago (Decca) with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Gluck's Armide with Les Musiciens du Louvre, released by Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label in March 1999.
Polegato finished first among the men at the 1995 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition and was awarded the William Matheus Sullivan Foundation Grant for opera.
11/06