Żołądkiewicz, Witold

A baritone singer, he graduated from the class of Roman Węgrzyn at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, and attended masterclasses run by Ryszard Karczykowski. In 2015 he obtained a PhD in musical art.

Since 1994, he has been a soloist at the Warsaw Chamber Opera, and has made guest appearances notably at the Grand Theatre in Łódź, Castle Opera in Szczecin, Cracow Opera, Grand Theatre – National Opera in Warsaw, and Naples’s San Carlo.

His operatic roles include Almaviva in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; Robinson in Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto; Figaro in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, 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, and Bruschino in Il signor Bruschino; Malatesta in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Belcore in L’elisir d’amore; Maciej in Moniuszko’s The Haunted Manor and Jontek in the Vilnius version of Halka; Onegin in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin; Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff and La Rocca in Un giorno di regno; Nicklausse / The Muse in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann; Donner in Wagner’s Das Rheingold; and Kaiser Overall in Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis. He also appears in operetta, notably as Falke and Eisenstein in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Danilo in Lehár’s The Merry Widow. He sung under conductors such as Gustav Kuhn, Antoni Wicherek, Mieczysław Nowakowski, Tadeusz Wojciechowski, Andrzej Straszyński, Tadeusz Kozłowski, Jerzy Swoboda, Ruben Silva, and Kai Bumann, and leading directors including Kazimierz Dejmek, Harry Kupfer, Maciej Prus, Giovanni Pampiglione, Ryszard Peryt, Jerzy Gruza, Andrzej Strzelecki, Jitka Stokalska, Michał Znaniecki, Margo Zālīte, Tomasz Konina, and Jarosław Kilian.

He is very active on the concert stage, in both large symphony and oratorio genres (Penderecki’s Symphony no. 8 Lieder der Vergänglichkeit, Maklakiewicz’s Symphony no. 2 Holy God, Górecki’s Beatus Vir, Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, and Mahler’s Symphony no. 8) and Lieder repertoire.

He has participated in music festivals including Al Bustan in Beirut, Octobre Musical in Carthage, Tyrol Festival, Adam Didur Festival in Sanok, and Bygoszcz Opera Festival. He has made numerous recordings for radio, TV, and labels such as Arte Nova, Dynamic, and DUX. He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit by the President of the Republic of Poland.