Paulo Szot Baritone

Season 23/24 Artist

Paulo Szot was born in São Paulo and is one of the most versatile artists of his generation. After studying in Poland, his family’s country of origin, he made his professional debut in 1997 in his native city singing the role of Figaro in the Barber of Seville. Since then, he has performed in some of the greatest opera houses in Europe and the United States. He made his U.S. debut at the New York City Opera as Escamillo (Carmen) in 2003 and his European debut the following year at the Marseille Opera in the title role of Eugene Onegin.
In France, in the seasons which followed, he sang the roles of Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas), Guglielmo, Donato (in Gian Carlo Menotti’s Maria Golovine) and Danilo (The Merry Widow) in Marseille, the title role of Don Giovanni and Marcello (La Bohème) in Bordeaux, Guglielmo in Nice and Don Giovanni in Toulon.
He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, along with the Drama Desk Award, The Outer Critics Award and The Theater World Award for the best actor of 2008 on Broadway for his performance in the role of Emile de Becque in South Pacific at the Lincoln Center Theater. In 2010, he made his debut appearance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in the lead role (Kovalyov) of Shostakovich’s The Nose with Valery Gergiev conducting. He has played Don Giovanni at the Dallas Opera, Escamillo at the New York Metropolitan Opera and he made his debut appearance at the Paris Opera in 2011 in the role of Guglielmo. He has also performed in concert with Deborah Voigt at Carnegie Hall and at New York’s Café Carlyle in a programme entitled An Evening with Paulo Szot. His other roles include Lescaut (Massenet’s Manon), Falke (Die Fledermaus) and the Captain (in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer) at the Metropolitan Opera; Lescaut (Manon Lescaut) and Higgins (My Fair Lady) in São Paulo.
He made his debut at Milan’s La Scala in Alexander Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart, at the Rome Opera in The Nose, at the Aix Festival in The Marriage of Figaro (Count Almaviva), at the Glyndebourne Festival in Carmen (Escamillo), in Australia in the title role of Eugene Onegin and in Asia in Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder and Mozart’s Requiem with the Malaysia Symphony Orchestra.

Projects:
Richard Nixon (Nixon in China) in Los Angeles, Alexander Hamilton, Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney in the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’s The New Prince at the Amsterdam Opera.