Brett Polegato's artistic sensibility has earned him the highest praise from audiences and critics: “his is a serious and seductive voice” says The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times has praised him for his “burnished, well-focused voice” which he uses with “considerable intelligence and nuance.” He appears regularly on the world's most distinguished stages including those of Lincoln Center, La Scala, the Concertgebouw, the Opéra National de Paris, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the Teatro Real, Roy Thomson Hall, the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, and can be heard as soloist in the Grammy Awards’ Best Classical Recording of 2003 - Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony (Telarc) with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano.

At the start of the 2011/12 season, Brett Polegato returns to Russia to star in a new production of Così fan tutte at the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre with conductor, Teodor Currentzis. In October, he travels home to participate in the Aldeburgh Connection’s “Clair de lune” concert, which celebrated the music of Gabriel Fauré and, in February, will join them in their 30th Anniversary Gala Concert. This winter, he will appear with both the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra for performances and a recording of Handel’s Messiah. In January, he sings Starbuck opposite the Ahab of Ben Heppner in Jake Heggie’s new opera, Moby Dick, for Calgary Opera and in the spring, he makes his debut with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Andris Nelsons singing Kurwenal in concert performances of Tristan und Isolde in Birmingham and Paris. In March, he appears with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his Orchestre Métropolitain at the new concert hall in Montréal in a performance and recording of Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie before heading to Winnipeg for Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. He concludes the season with performances of Sharpless in Madama Butterfly with the Seattle Opera.

Mr. Polegato’s 2010/11 season began as Il Conte Almaviva in a production of Le Nozze di Figaro for Opera Hamilton. In November, he travelled to Calgary to perform with the Calgary Philhamonic Orchestra in “Mozart at the Opera” – a concert celebrating the ingenious music of Mozart. Later that month, he journeyed to Moscow to sing the title role in Berg’s Wozzeck at the prestigious Bolshoi Theatre in a production directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov and conducted by Teodor Currentzis. Polegato spent December in Toronto, performing Handel’s Messiah with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. In the New Year, he illustrated his passion for the Art Song by performing at the Aldeburgh Connection in a recital entitled A Shropshire Lad in Ontario, and in February, was once again a featured soloist with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra - this time in Bach’s B Minor Mass. In the spring, Polegato returned to the Canadian Opera Company to sing Dandini in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and concluded his season as Papageno in a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte for Cincinnati Opera.

One of today’s most sought-after lyric baritones on the operatic stage, Brett has made a name for himself in a number of dramatic roles, most notably the title roles in Eugene Onegin, which his has sung at the Canadian Opera Company, the New Israeli Opera and Vancouver Opera and Don Giovanni. He has appeared frequently in the title role of Pelléas et Mélisande, including new productions at the Strasbourg’s Opéra National du Rhin, at the Leipzig Opera conducted by Marc Minkowski, and in Munich with Marcello Viotti. Pelléas was also the role which marked his Paris Opera debut in September of 2004. Another of his signature roles is Il Conte Almaviva in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, which his has sung to great acclaim for companies that include New York City Opera, L’Opéra de Montréal and Norwegian Opera in Oslo. He has appeared with the Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra de Genève, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opéra National de Toulouse, Teatro Real in Madrid, Saito Kinen Festival, Florence’s Maggio Musicale, Vlaamse Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver Opera and Calgary Opera in over 50 roles, including Oreste (Iphigénie en Tauride), Zurga (Les Pêcheurs de Perles), Yeletsky (Pique Dame), Valentin (Faust), Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Dandini (La Cenerentola), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), and Wiedhopf in Braunfel’s Die Vögel.

Equally at ease on the concert and recital stages, Mr. Polegato made his Carnegie Hall recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in May 2003 with pianist, Warren Jones, and returned the following year with the Atlanta Symphony to reprise their Grammy Award winning performance of A Sea Symphony. He is a frequent guest artist with the Bayerisher Rundfunkorchester in Munich and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared with most every major U.S. and Canadian orchestra. In 2005, he made his highly-acclaimed debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, in a programme which included Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Fauré’s Requiem. He has appeared as soloist with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast at Wolf Trap, the Chicago Symphony in the U.S. premiere of Saariaho’s Cinq Reflets, the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mahler orchestral lieder, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the Toronto Symphony in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In 2002, he returned to the London BBC Proms for a concert performance of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with Gianandrea Noseda conducting, and rejoined the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. He has performed Handel's Messiah with the Toronto Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis, and with the Handel & Haydn Society under Andrew Parrott. As a recitalist, Mr. Polegato appears frequently throughout North America and Europe, and is particularly noted for his programming choices and wide range of repertoire.

Polegato's discography shifts as seamlessly through genres as his live appearances. His recordings include the Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony, his critically praised solo disc, To A Poet, with pianist Iain Burnside, on CBC Records, an Analekta-Fleur de Lys disc of Bach's popular Coffee and Peasant Cantatas with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and a live period-instrument performance of Messiah with the Handel & Haydn Society on Arabesque Recordings. In March 2000, CBC Records released a disc entitled Opera Encores that joined him with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra led by Richard Bradshaw. His opera recordings include Emmerich Kálmán's Die Herzogin von Chicago (Decca) with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Gluck's Armide with Les Musiciens du Louvre (Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label).

He finished first among the men at the 1995 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Mr. Polegato is represented exclusively by Simon Goldstone at Intermusica Artists.