|
The Polish bass-baritone, Robert Gierlach, graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, the vocal class under Professor Kazimierz Pustelak. He won the 1st Award in the Viotti International Music Competition in Vercelli, Italy, and the Audience Award in the Alfredo Kraus International Singing Competition in Las Palmas.
Already as a student Robert Gierlach began his collaboration with the Warsaw Chamber Opera, where he sang in W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. Back then he also performed in the Polish National Opera as Don Basilio in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. He made numerous tours abroad with these theatres (to Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan) He has also performed in the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk, as well as in the Cracow Opera.
Robert Gierlach is a soloist at the Polish Royal Opera. He performs on many prestigious opera and concert stages in Europe, North America, and Japan. He has sang in Teatro La Fenice in Venice (as Count in Le nozze di Figaro by W.A. Mozart, De Fiesque in Maria di Rohan by Donizetti), Teatro Filarmonico in Verona (as the Pharaoh in Rossini’s Moses in Egypt in the concert version of Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah oratorio), Teatro Comunale in Bologne (e.g. as Leporello in W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Don Profondo in Il viaggio a Reims by Rossini), Teatro dell’ Opera in Rome (Alidor in Rossini’s Cinderella ) and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. He sang the part of the Count in W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in Teatro G. Verdi in Trieste and Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he also played Sabinin in Corghi’s Tatiana.
In France Robert Gierlach performed in the opera houses in Nice and Marseilles (as Leporello in W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni), and in the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris (as Creon in Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and Archiereus in Szymanowski’s King Roger). His signature performance is the title role of Figaro from W.A. Mozart’s opera, whom he played e.g. in the Detroit Opera House, the Nico Theatre in Cape Town (RPA), at the Opera Festival in Glyndebourne, in the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, the Grand Opera in Miami, Florida, the Opera du Montreal, and in the Lyric Opera in Baltimore.
Robert Gierlach has also performed in the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerpen (Argante in George Frideric Handel’s Rinaldo), in the New York City Opera (Leporello), in the Tokyo-NHK (Creon in Oedipus Rex), and as Don Giovanni in the Arizona Opera and the Cleveland Opera). He played Vronsky in the world premiere of Anna Carenina by D. Carlson performed on stages in the Florida Grand Opera (Miami) and the Opera in Saint Louis.
Robert Gierlach gives many concerts. He collaborates with numerous orchestras, such as: the Symphonic Orchestra of the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, I Solisti Veneti, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin, Dresdner Rundfunk Orcheser, or NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo). He has also sung with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva and Lausanne, and the Philadelphia Philharmonic in Philadelphia and at the Carnegie Hall in New York (Creon and Messenger in Oedipus Rex by I. Stravinsky).
Robert Gierlach participated in numerous music festivals, e.g. in the Salzburger Festspiele, the BBC Proms (Royal Albert Hall), the Berliner Festwoche and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Wratislavia Cantans, and the Mozart Festival of the Warsaw Chamber Opera. He has collaborated with many acclaimed opera conductors, directors, and singers.
Robert Gierlach is also an esteemed song performer. He participated regularly in successive editions of the Summer Song Festival of Polish Composers and the European Song Festival, where he performed the song cycles of Frédéric Chopin, M. Karłowicz, P. Łukaszewski, F. Schubert, A. Dvořák, and other composers.
Robert Gierlach has won a Polish record industry ‘Fryderyk’ award for a disc of songs by Paweł Łukaszewski and ICMA awards for a recording of Feliks Nowowiejski’s Quo Vadis (the part of St Peter). For several years, he has taught solo singing on the Vocal-Acting Department of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. |
