Ewa Wolak
An artist endowed with a voice of an unusually dark timbre, large scale and agility, which allows her to perform a diverse repertoire – from early music, through Gioacchino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner to contemporary music. Her repertoire includes leading parts in operas, oratorios and songs.
A graduate of the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow (diploma with honorary mention), as a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst scholarship holder she also completed postgraduate and opera studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe.
Ewa Wolak has won prizes at prestigious vocal competitions, in Athens (Grand Prix Maria Callas) and ̕s-Hertogenbosch (Internationale Vocal Competition, the Netherlands), amongst others. Her numerous opera parts include: Delilah (Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah), eponymous part in Bizet’s Carmen, Fides (Giacomo Meyerbeer’s The Prophet), Fricka and Erda (Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen), Ulrika (Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera), Quickly (Verdi’s Falstaff), Olga (Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin), Isabella (Gioacchino Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri), and Ratmir (Mikhail Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila), as well as the leading parts in George Frideric Handel’s operas.
The artist has collaborated with Deutsche Oper and Komische Oper in Berlin, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, the opera houses in Helsinki, Malmö, Montpellier, Toulouse and Trieste, as well as with Theater an der Wien. She has participated in numerous festivals in Warsaw, Wrocław, Krakow, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and other cities and has given concerts in Europe, Israel, South Korea, Japan and the United States, under the baton of such conductors as Antoni Wit, Marco Armiliato, Sir Simon Rattle, Donald Runnicles, Andris Nelson, Pier Giorgio Morandi, Philippe Herreweghe, Łukasz Borowicz, and Paul McCreesh, among others. The artist has many CD recordings to her credit (for Naxos and DUX record labels).
She has been honoured with the European Culture Award for her artistic achievements and in 2011, she received the prestigious German opera title of Kammersängerin. In 2019, she was awarded the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture Gloria Artis.
Ewa Wolak has run a singing class at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow. Since 2016, she has been professor at the prestigious Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. In February 2023, she was awarded the title of Professor of Art.
[2024]