Adam Banaszak

Music Director of Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense – the Orchestra of Historical Instruments of the Warsaw Chamber Opera (since the 2023/2024 season). From 2019-2024, he was the Music Director of the Wrocław Opera, and in the 2021/2022 season, the Artistic Director of the Grand Theatre in Łódź.

Opera is the conductor's most important field of activity. He has led over 600 concerts and performances, held musical direction or collaborated in the preparation of over 50 premieres. He has conducted works such as: The Barber of Seville, Cinderella (Rossini), L'elisir d'amore, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Don Carlos, Madame Butterfly, La bohème, Tosca, Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, Eugene Onegin, Halka, Faust, Carmen.

Collaboration with ensembles playing on historical instruments has resulted in, among others, performances of Monteverdi's Orfeo, Handel's Julius Caesar and Messiah, Telemann's Brockes-Passion, Haydn's The Creation, and Mozart's operas.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music has accompanied him in a special way throughout his artistic journey. He has conducted premieres of Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute. He has also frequently conducted his symphonies, piano and violin concertos, sacred works, and performances of the so-called Mozart – Da Ponte trilogy. For the DUX label, with ensembles of the Warsaw Chamber Opera, he recorded a critically acclaimed Requiem by this composer.

The conductor's broad repertoire palette is complemented by contemporary music. He has premiered operas by Paweł Mykietyn (The Magic Mountain) and Zygmunt Krauze (Yemaya – Queen of the Seas). He has also frequently explored less frequently staged works (Trouble in Tahiti by Bernstein, La voix humaine by Poulenc). He has made recordings of Britten's Curlew River and The Burning Fiery Furnace.

He has conducted performances at the Warsaw Chamber Opera, Wrocław Opera, Grand Theatre in Łódź, Grand Theatre – National Opera, Baltic Opera in Gdańsk, Krakow Opera, Silesian Opera in Bytom, Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in Białystok, Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, Opera at the Castle in Szczecin.

In the current season, the conductor is leading, among others, premieres of Cinderella (Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic) and Rossini's The Barber of Seville (Warsaw Chamber Opera).

He is an assistant professor at the Academy of Music in Wrocław with a habilitated doctor degree. As a popularizer of opera on Polish Radio Two, he co-hosted – together with Agata Kwiecińska – a series of broadcasts about the music of Giacomo Puccini and Johann Strauss.

In the photo: Adam Banaszak, photo: artist's promotional materials