The Sinfonietta of the Warsaw Chamber Opera (Sinfonietta WOK) was set up as an initiative of Stefan Sutkowski in the 1970s/80s following the transformation of Jerzy Maksymiuk’s Polish Chamber Orchestra.
Sinfonietta WOK is the world’s only orchestra whose repertoire includes all Mozart’s and most of Rossini’s operas, which the ensemble has presented during the successive editions of the Mozart and Rossini festivals in Warsaw, and also in Vienna and Paris. The orchestra has been a frequent performer at prestigious festivals, notably in Madrid and Aix-en-Provence, and the Al-Bustan Festival in Beirut, and performed concerts in nearly all European countries, Oman, Lebanon, and Japan, where their Mozart chamber repertoire was greeted rapturously in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya.
The orchestra specialises in performing classical music as well as new music, also presenting the world premieres of stage pieces by outstanding Polish contemporary composers Zygmunt Krauze, Zbigniew Rudziński, Bernadetta Matuszczak, Michał Dobrzyński, Dariusz Przybylski, and Leszek Możdżer.
The orchestra was awarded a Fryderyk for the recording of Mieczysław Karłowicz’s complete tone poems under Jacek Kaspszyk. They also made the first – and as yet the only – CD recording of the original (the so-called “Vilnius”) version of Stanisław Moniuszko’s opera Halka under Ruben Silva.
The Warsaw Sinfonietta has performed with consummate soloists including Barbara Hendricks, Shlomo Mintz, Wanda Wiłkomirska, Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, Janusz Olejniczak and Jadwiga Kotnowska, and worked with the eminent Polish conductors: Jacek Kaspszyk, Tomasz Bugaj, Karol Teutsch, Tadeusz Strugała and Mieczysław Nowakowski.
The conductors regularly working with the orchestra include Zbigniew Graca, Tadeusz Karolak, and Ruben Silva – currently its Artistic Director.