The Ukrainian bass-baritone Oleksandr Pushniak garners praise from audiences and critics alike for his impressive stage presence and his exploration of the great roles of the dramatic baritone and bass-baritone repertoire in the field of tension between vocal power and delicate cantilena.

In the 2023/24 season, he will make his house and role debut at the Semperoper Dresden as Barak in a new production of Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten under the musical direction of Christian Thielemann. From the coming season, he will become a member of the ensemble there and will be heard amongst others as Scarpia in Tosca under Marco Armiliato and Comte Capulet in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette under Robert Jindra. He is currently in the ensemble of the Weimar National Theater, where he has appeared since 2018 in the title roles of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Caligula by Detlef Glanert, as well as Amonasro in Aida, JP Morgan in Copeland’s Electric Saint, the Dragon in Dessau’s Lanzelot, the four villains in The Tales of Hoffmann, Leporello in Don Giovanni, and in the world premiere of Ludger Vollmers opera The Circle, among others.

From 2011 to 2017, he appeared at the Staatstheater Braunschweig in roles such as Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, Amfortas in Parsifal, Jochanaan in Salome, Count Tomsky in Pique Dame, Griswold in Argento’s The Voyage of Edgar Allen Poe, Carlo Gérard in Andrea Chénier, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, Comte d’Obenthal in Le prophète by Mayerbeer and Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro.

Guest engagements have taken Oleksandr Pushniak to the Bayreuth Festival – as Donner in Das Rheingold and King Heinrich in the Lohengrin youth production -, to the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Deutsche Oper am Rhein as Amonasro, to Kiel Theater in the title role of Szymanowski’s Król Roger and to the Müpa in Budapest, where he was heard as Baleso in Liszt’s Sardanapalo. In 2016, he made his debut as the Dutchman in the first ever production of a Wagner opera in Singapore; he also sang this role at Erfurt Theater. He performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam during an opera gala of the Dutch Touring Opera.

He is an Alumnus of the opera studio of the Washington National Opera, where he sang e.g. Polonius in Thomas’ Hamlet in a production by Thaddeus Strassberger and under the musical direction of Plácido Domingo.

Oleksandr Pushiak has also worked with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Jaap van Zweden, Kirill Karabits, Dan Ettinger, Patrick Fournillier, Srboljub Dinić, Dominik Beykirch, Alexander Prior and Alexander Joel, and with stage directors such as Peter Konwitschny, Frank Castorf, Barbora Horáková, Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito, Calixto Bieito, Dietrich Hilsdorf, Benedikt von Peter, Philipp Himmelmann, Roland Schwab, Walter Sutcliffe, Johannes Erath and Yona Kim.

He won the 7th Singing Competition for Wagner Voices in Bayreuth already in 2012.

His discography contains publications of Das Rheingold (Donner) with the Hong Kong Philharmonic on the NAXOS label, Sardanapalo (Beleso) and Lanzelot (Drache) with the Staatskapelle Weimar on AUDITE, and Aladin (Muluk) with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig on JPC.