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La Scala engaged Piotr Nowacki in 1987 for the title role of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan. He was already a soloist of the Teatr Wielki in Łódź, where he made his début as the Bonze in Madama Butterfly, while still a student at the city's Academy of Music; he graduated in 1985 from Włodzimierz Zalewski's class. Prizes came quickly — firsts in Warsaw, Kudowa and Krynica, third at the Adam Didur competition in Bytom, the final of the Belvedere in Vienna, a laureate's place at the Pavarotti competition in Philadelphia in 1989. La Monnaie, the Bavarian State Opera, Vlaamse Opera, La Fenice, Bologna and Wiesbaden followed, with festival work in Edinburgh, Granada and Puerto Rico. His repertoire gathers the Slavic basses — Pimen and Varlaam, Kochubey in Mazeppa, Skołuba and Zbigniew in The Haunted Manor — beside Klingsor, Lodovico, Sparafucile and Masetto. He is a soloist of the Teatr Wielki–Polish National Opera in Warsaw, where his parts have included Lodovico in Otello and Brander in Berlioz's La damnation de Faust.