Michał Klauza

Artistic director of the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw. In 2013-2015 music director of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic, and in 2009-2015 2nd conductor of the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR).

He was a conductor and deputy music director of the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff (2004-2008). In December 2011, he conducted Szymanowski's King Roger in a concert version at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv, prepared as the final event of the Foreign Cultural Program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. In September 2021, he prepared and conducted, together with the Krakow Opera ensembles, the world premiere of Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa's opera Wanda. In 2019, at the Teatr Wielki – Opera Narodowa in Warsaw, he prepared and musically directed the premiere of Britten's opera Billy Budd, performed for the first time in Poland, and in 2023, on the same stage, he prepared and conducted the premiere of Britten's Peter Grimes.

He has collaborated with numerous orchestras in Poland and abroad. He performed in France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Armenia, South Korea and the countries of the Persian Gulf. He has collaborated with the Baltic Opera, Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, the Teatr Wielki in Poznań, the Teatr Wielki – Opera Narodowa in Warsaw (1998-2003).

His artistic achievements include a number of radio and television recordings, including: with NOSPR he made the first studio recording of Szymanowski's operetta Loteria na mężów released by Polish Radio and nominated for the Fryderyk 2019 award. Among the discography under his baton, Polish Radio has released, among others: Szymanowski's opera Hagith recorded with the Polish Radio Orchestra (Fryderyk 2020 award in the category: Album of the Year, Oratorio and Opera Music), Henryk Wars' symphonic works, Moniuszko's Masses and the album Music of Polish Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries. In May 2002, with the ensembles of the Teatr Wielki – Opera Nardowa in Warsaw, he recorded Szymanowski's performance King Roger for the Polish Radio. He has made a number of recordings of film music, including for Jerzy Skolimowski's award-winning movie IO. From 2016 to February 2022, he was a guest conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where he prepared and conducted the premieres of Donizetti's Don Pasquale and Weinberg's The Idiot, and also conducted performances of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and Shostakovich's Katerina Ismailova. He broke off the collaboration after the barbaric attack of the Putin regime on Ukraine.

In 2013-2015, he was the Artistic Director of the Orchestra of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. Since 2020, he has been working at the Department of Symphonic and Opera Conducting at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. A graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw in the class of symphonic and opera conducting of prof. Ryszard Dudek and postgraduate studies at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Saint Petersburg in the class of Ilia Musin.

(photo by Michał Heller, OiFP)