Радослав Жуковски

A bass, and a Wrocław one for most of his working life, Radosław Żukowski began collecting prizes at the vocal competitions of Bytom in 1981 and then, in quick succession, Moscow, Barcelona and Busseto. He has sung on Polish stages since 1982 and with the Wrocław company — the Opera Dolnośląska, later the Opera Wrocławska — since 1994, in a repertory that runs from Sarastro and Mozart's Figaro to Boris Godunov, Nabucco, Rigoletto, Halka and Moniuszko's The Haunted Manor, and takes in the High Priest of Szymanowski's King Roger and Méphistophélès in Faust. Poland gave him its Medal of Young Art in 1990 and Wrocław its Golden Needle in 2001. He was engaged for Gounod's Faust at the Sofia Opera on 28 March 2003, in a cast that included Stefka Mineva, Emil Ugrinov, Arseniy Arsov and Alma-Lisa Bandalovska. He was still appearing on Polish stages in 2022. He was born in Wroclaw on 11 November 1955 and took his diploma there in 1982, from the Academy of Music in the class of Irena Galuszko, with a special award from the rector and the senate for his work as a student. The prizes came in the same stretch: second at the Adam Didur competition in Bytom in 1981, sixth at the Tchaikovsky in Moscow in 1982, second at the Francisco Vinas in Barcelona the same year, where no first prize was given, and a laureate's place at Voci Verdiane in Busseto. Oratorio and festival work took him to Bayreuth, Bad Hersfeld, the Leipzig Bachfest, Wratislavia Cantans and the Penderecki Festival in Krakow in 1998. Poland gave him the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture — Gloria Artis in 2010.