Witold Zoladkiewicz – baritone
Witold Zoladkiewicz graduated from the class of Roman Węgrzyn on the Vocal Department of the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, and subsequently honed his skills on masterclass courses led by the celebrated Polish tenor Ryszard Karczykowski.
From 1994 to 2017 he was a soloist with the Warsaw Chamber Opera; he is now associated with the Polish Royal Opera. He has also appeared as a guest at the Teatr Wielki in Łódź, the Opera na Zamku in Szczecin, the Cracow Opera, the Wrocław Opera, the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. He has performed numerous parts in operas by Mozart (Conte di Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro), Cimarosa (Robinson in Il matrimonio segreto), Rossini (Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Dandini in La Cenerentola, Taddeo in L'Italiana in Algeri, Germano in La scala di seta, Prosdocimo in Il Turco in Italia, Slook in La cambiale di matrimonio, Fabrizio in La gazza ladra, Bruschino padre in Il Signor Bruschino), Donizetti (Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Belcore in L'elisir d'amore), Moniuszko (Maciej and Miecznik in The Haunted Manor, Jontek in the Vilnius version of Halka), Tchaikovsky (Onegin in Eugene Onegin), Verdi (Ford in Falstaff, Tesoriere in Un giorno di Regno), Offenbach (Nicklausse/La Muse in Les contes d'Hoffmann), Wagner (Donner in Das Rheingold) and Ullmann (Kaiser Overall in Der Kaiser von Atlantis).
In operetta, his roles have included Dr Falke and Eisenstein in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Danilo in Lehar’s Die lustige Witwe.
He has sung under such conductors as Gustav Kuhn, Antoni Wicherek, Grzegorz Nowak, Mieczysław Nowakowski, Tadeusz Wojciechowski, Andrzej Straszyński, Tadeusz Kozłowski, Michał Klauza, Ruben Silva and Kai Bumann. Among the outstanding directors with whom he has worked have been Kazimierz Dejmek, Harry Kupfer, Maciej Prus, Giovanni Pampiglione, Ryszard Peryt, Jerzy Gruza, Andrzej Strzelecki, Henryk Konwiński, Jitka Stokalska, Michał Znaniecki, Tomasz Konina, Margo Zālīte and Jarosław Kilian.
He has a busy concert schedule, appearing in large symphonic and oratorial works (Penderecki’s Eighth Symphony (‘Lieder der Verganglichkeit’), Maklakiewicz’s Second Symphony (‘Święty Boże’ [Holy God]), Górecki’s Beatus Vir, Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony) and in song repertoire, which is a particularly important part of his artistic work.
He has taken part in many music festivals, including in Beirut (Al Bustan International Festival of Music and Arts), Carthage (Octobre Musical), Erl (Tiroler Festspiele), Warsaw (Warsaw Autumn) and Bydgoszcz (Bydgoszcz Opera Festival).
He has also made many recordings for radio, television and disc (Arte Nova, Dynamic, Dux).
The Cracow production of Der Kaiser von Atlantis, directed by Beata Redo-Dobber, with music direction by Tomasz Tokarczyk and Witold Zoladkiewicz in the titular role, was declared best production at the Szeged Opera Festival in Hungary in 2011.
He has also been decorated by the President of Poland with the Bronze Cross of Merit.