Brett Polegato appears regularly on the world's most distinguished stages including those of Lincoln Center, La Scala, the Concertgebouw, the Opera National de Paris, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the Teatro Real, Roy Thomson Hall, the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall.

Brett Polegato opened the Canadian Opera Company's 2009/2010 season as Sharpless in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. He performed Il Conte Almaviva in a new production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in Oslo, sang the title role in Don Giovanni for Calgary Opera and Lescaut in a concert performance of Massenet's Manon for Opera Lyra (Ottawa). He took part in Vancouver Opera's 50th Anniversary Gala Concert. Performed Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Colorado Symphony. Gave a lieder concert with the Aldeburgh Connection to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Hugo Wolf. He made his debut with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony with Robert Spano conducting. He performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

In 2008/2009, Brett Polegato opened the Canadian Opera Company's season singing the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni. He performed the title character in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in a new production for Vancouver Opera. He sang Handel's Messiah with the Handel & Haydn Society and, later, with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir in Toronto. He performed Ned Keene in Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes with Jeffrey Tate conducting at the Teatro di San Carlo (Naples). He appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in performances of Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony. His season culminated in his first essay of Schubert's monumental cycle, Winterreise, with pianist Stephen Ralls, for the Aldeburgh Connection in Toronto.

His has sung Eugene Onegin at the Canadian Opera Company, the New Israeli Opera and Vancouver Opera. He has appeared frequently in the title role of Pelleas et Melisande, including new productions at the Strasbourg's Opera National du Rhin, at the Leipzig Opera conducted by Marc Minkowski, and in Munich with Marcello Viotti. Pelleas was also the role which marked his Paris Opera debut in September of 2004. Another of his signature roles is Il Conte Almaviva in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, which his has sung for companies that include New York City Opera, L'Opera de Montreal and Michigan Opera Theater. He has appeared with the Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera de Geneve, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opera National de Toulouse, Teatro Real in Madrid, Saito Kinen Festival, Florence's Maggio Musicale, Vlaamse Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver Opera and Calgary Opera in over 50 roles, including Oreste (Iphigenie en Tauride), Zurga (Les Pecheurs de Perles), Yeletsky (The Queen of Spades), Valentin (Faust), Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Dandini (La Cenerentola), Guglielmo (Cosi fan tutte), Papageno (Die Zauberfloete), and Wiedhopf in Braunfel’s Die Voegel.

Equally at ease on the concert and recital stages, Mr. Polegato made his Carnegie Hall recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in May 2003 with pianist, Warren Jones, and returned the following year with the Atlanta Symphony to reprise their Grammy Award winning performance of A Sea Symphony. He is a frequent guest artist with the Bayerisher Rundfunkorchester in Munich and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared with most every major U.S. and Canadian orchestra. In 2005, he made his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, in a programme which included Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Faure’s Requiem. He has appeared as soloist with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra in Walton's Belshazzar's Feast at Wolf Trap, the Chicago Symphony in the U.S. premiere of Saariaho's Cinq Reflets, the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mahler orchestral lieder, the Toronto Symphony in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, he returned to the London BBC Proms for a concert performance of Ravel's L'heure espagnole with Gianandrea Noseda conducting, and rejoined the National Symphony Orchestra at Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center for Brahms' Ein Deutches Requiem. He has performed Handel's Messiah with the Toronto Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis, and with the Handel & Haydn Society under Andrew Parrott. As a recitalist, Mr. Polegato appears frequently throughout North America and Europe.

Polegato's recordings include the Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony, his solo disc, To A Poet, with pianist Iain Burnside, on CBC Records, an Analekta-Fleur de Lys disc of Bach's popular Coffee and Peasant Cantatas with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and a live period-instrument performance of Messiah with the Handel & Haydn Society on Arabesque Recordings. In March 2000, CBC Records released a disc entitled Opera Encores that joined him with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra led by Richard Bradshaw. His opera recordings include Kalman's Die Herzogin von Chicago (Decca) with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Gluck's Armide with Les Musiciens du Louvre, on the Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label.

He finished first among the men at the 1995 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.