Wojtek Gierlach was educated at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw under Kazimierz Pustelak. He may boast a range of successes at international singing competitions, including the Ada Sari competition (1999, 1st prize), the Bilbao competition (2000, 2nd prize), the Premio Caruso competition in Milan (2001, grand prix), and the Francisco Viñas competition in Barcelona (2004, 3rd prize). He is also a winner of the Jan Kiepura Music Theatre Award (Poland, 2012).
In the 2017/18 season he made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Priest in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtscensk District under Antonio Pappano.
Other highlight include debuts at Royal Danish Opera and the Welsh National Opera as Sir Giorgio in Bellini’s The Puritans under Carlo Rizzi and performances as Melisso in Handel’s Alcina (alongside Joyce DiDonato and the English Concert) under Harry Bicket at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Théâthre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and Theater an der Wien.
He has also sung Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville (Deutsche Oper Berlin); Oroveso in Norma (Teatro Nacional São Carlos in Lisbon); Asur in Semiramida (Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen); Alidoro in La Cenerentola (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence); Argenio in Imeneo (Opera Ireland in Dublin); Melisso in Alcina (Opéra National de Bordeaux); Orbazzano in Tankred (Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville); Leporello in Don Giovanni (Nico Theater in Cape Town); and Rodolfo The Somnambulist (Theater St. Gallen).
In 2017 he became a soloist with the newly-founded Polska Opera Królewska (Polish Royal Opera) in Warsaw.
With the Polish National Opera he has appeared as Colline in La bohème, Don Alfonso in Lucretia Borgia, Raimondo in Lucy of Lammermoor, Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro, and Escamillo in Carmen, Gessler in Guillaume Tell, and Zbigniew in The Haunted Manor.
His concert repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary music (K. Penderecki, W. Kilar). He performed the title parts in Haendel’s Saul and Mendelssohn’s Elias under Helmuth Rilling with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, and sang in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Bach’s Magnificat at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the Orquesta del Principado de Asturias in Oviedo, Penderecki’s Dies Irae with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas, and Verdi’s Requiem with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
(photo: M. Heller)