She subsequently sang on a number of opera stages in Germany (for example, Mannheim, Ulm, Karlsruhe, Darmstadt, Hannover and Freiburg).
Her repertoire comprises primarily dramatic soprano roles, such as the Wagnerian roles of Isolde in Tristan und Isolde, Brünnhilde (Der Ring des Nibelungen), Kundry (Parsifal) and Ortrud (Lohengrin), and Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra, Berlioz' Didon and Cassandre (Les Troyens), Alban Berg's Marie (Wozzeck) and Janáček's Kostelnička (Jenůfa).
In November 1988, after a single performance of Der fliegende Holländer with the San Francisco Opera, Polaski, a born-again Christian, canceled all her future engagements and announced she would sing only spiritual music.
She has appeared as a guest in Amsterdam, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Berlin State Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic, in Bonn, Chicago, Duisburg, Dresden, Florence, Frankfurt, Geneva, Genoa, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Cologne, at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, in Lucerne, Mailand, Mannheim, Montreux and Munich, at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Carnegie Hall, in Oslo, Paris, Rome, Salzburg, Stuttgart, at the Sydney Festival, in Tokyo, Vienna, Yokohama and Zürich.
The title role of Elektra has been a feature of Polaski's repertoire for years, and she has performed it with major orchestras, directors and conductors (for example, Simone Young, Daniel Barenboim, Lorin Maazel, and Semyon Bychkov).