foto: Michał Heller OiFP
Artistic director of the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw (OPRW). Since April 2016 – a guest conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where he has prepared and conducted the premieres of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Weinberg’s The Idiot. In 2019 at the Teatr Wielki – National Opera in Warsaw he prepared and led the first Polish performance of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd.
Previously he served as music director of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in Białystok (2013–2015), where, in addition to concerts of symphonic music, he prepared and presented several operatic premieres (Verdi’s La Traviata, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Bizet’s Carmen). He also worked as associate conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (2009–2015). In 2004–2008 he served as asso-ciate conductor and deputy music director of the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff (UK), where he staged a wide range of productions such as Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff (featuring Bryn Terfel in the title role), Lehár’s The Merry Widow (recorded for the BBC television), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni as well as Puccini’s La Bohème. In July 2015 he conducted a concert performance of Zaid Jabri’s opera Cities of Salt at the Royal Opera House in London. In December 2011 at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kiev he presented a concert version of Szymanowski’s King Roger, staged as the final event of the Foreign Cultural Programme of the Polish Presidency in the Council of the European Union.
He has led numerous orchestras in Poland and abroad, such as the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (PNRSO), Warsaw Philharmonic, the Sinfonia Varsovia, most of Polish philharmonic and music academy orchestras, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation, as well as the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra (2002). He has conducted concerts in France, Germany, Switzerland (a gala concert in memory of Mstislav Rostropovich, featuring Ivan Monighetti, Sol Gabetta and Misha Maisky), Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Armenia, Korea, and in the countries of the Persian Gulf.
At the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk he conducted performances of R. Strauss’s Salome and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, as well as the premiere of a double spectacle: Fleishmann / Shostakovich’s Rothschild’s Violin and Shostakovich / Meyer’s The Gamblers. At the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz he led the premiere of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, and at the Grand Theatre in Poznań – Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida as well as the first night of Die Fledermaus. In 1998–2003 Michał Klauza worked as a conductor at Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki – National Opera.
The artist has recorded extensively for the radio and television. His releases include the first studio recording of Szymanowski’s operetta Lottery for a Husband (with the PNRSO, released by Polish Radio; nominated for the 2019 Fryderyk Award). Other releases of performances under his baton include Karol Szymanowski’s Hagith and the symphonic works of Henryk Wars (with Polish Radio Orchestra under its previous name, PRSO). May 2002 saw the release of Szymanowski’s King Roger (with the ensembles of the Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki – National Opera).
Michał Klauza is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Academy (now – University) of Music in Warsaw, where he studied orchestra and opera conducting with Prof. Ryszard Dudek. He developed his skills at two-year postgraduate studies with Ilya Musin at the Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory and at international courses for conductors taught by Prof. Kurt Redel (Rome, 1996) and Valery Gergiev (Rotterdam, 1997).
