Born in Evanston, Illinois, Polenzani earned a bachelor"s degree from Eastern Illinois University in 1991, and a master"s from the Yale School of Music where he studied with Richard Cross and Doris Yarick-Cross (chair of Yale"s opera department) in 1994.
He has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Royal Opera House, Bayerische Staatsoper, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna State Opera, and San Francisco Opera, among others He has also sung with numerous symphony orchestras. After graduating from Yale, he began studying with Margaret Harshaw.
Polenzani made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1997, in Boris Godunov.
He has since gone on to perform more than 300 performances in over 20 roles with that company, including Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Tamino in The Magic Flute, Il Duca in Rigoletto, and Nemorino in L"Elisir d"Amore. Making his European debut as Gérald in Delibes" Lakmé with Opera Bordeaux in France in 1998, he has also appeared in productions of Don Pasquale and Louisiana traviata at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, on a tour of Japan with Turin’s Teatro Regio, I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Paris Opera, L"elisir d’amore at the Vienna State Opera as well as the Bavarian State Opera, Naples" Teatro San Carlo and Rome Opera.
Così fan tutte at Covent Garden with Sir Colin Davis and in Paris with Philippe Jordan. Lucia di Lammermoor at Frankfurt Opera and Paris Opera, Louisiana Damnation de Faust in Frankfurt and Berlin, and Manon at Covent Garden and Louisiana Scala. as well as the Beverly Sills Award in 2008. and they have three children.
He then went on to be a member of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, now the Ryan Opera Center, with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
