Finalists Revealed For International Opera Awards 2024

The International Opera Awards havea nnounced the shortlist for this year’s Awards, set to take place at the Bayerische Staatsoper’sPrinzregententheater in Munich on Wednesday 2 October. The Awards honour exceptional operatic talent from across the globe, celebrating the diverse and collaborative nature of this cherished art form and will be live streamed free on OperaVision.

Finalists for this year’s Awards represent 27 countries, showcasing the truly international spirit of opera. The shortlist includes artists companies and productions from Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Samoa, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, USA, UK and Ukraine. There were over 16,000 nominations made for the Awards this year.

The Awards cover a broad range of categories, including singers, conductors, directors, designers, productions, festivals, recordings, companies and more. The shortlist was curated by an esteemed international jury of opera critics, administrators and performers, chaired by John Allison, editor of Opera magazine (the Founding Media Partner of the Awards).

Following the tradition of previous winners staging the Awards ceremony, the Bayerische Staatsoper, winner of Opera Company of the Year award in 2023, will host this year’s event. Companies shortlisted for the Award this year include Komische Oper, National Theatre Prague, Opéra national du Rhin, Opera Philadelphia, Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège and Wiener Staatsoper.

In the Rediscovered Work category, there are four works by female composers for the first time, while in the Male Singer category, Samoan tenor Pene Pati, the 2022 Readers’ Award winner, is shortlisted alongside Benjamin Bernheim, Cyrille Dubois, Gerald Finley, Jonathan Tetelman, and Klaus Florian Vogt. Among the Female Singer finalists are Rosa Feola, making her third appearance in this category, alongside Lisette Oropesa, Elsa Dreisig, Aleksandra Kurzak, Anna Pirozzi, and Adela Zaharia.

Voting remains open for the Readers’ Award – Opera Magazine with Opera News, the only category determined by the public. This year’s finalists are Xabier Anduaga, Ekaterina Bakanova, Piotr Beczała, Sara Blanch, Arturo Chacón Cruz, Asmik Grigorian, Ermonela Jaho and Ludovic Tézier. Votes can be cast until 5pm on Friday 6 September on the International Opera Awards website.

Special awards including Leadership, Philanthropy and Lifetime Achievement will also be announced at the awards ceremony.

The full shortlist can be found below and on the International Opera Awards website.

BBC Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny will again host the awards ceremony, which will feature live performances from renowned opera stars and singers from the Bayerische Staatsoper Young Artists programme. Vladimir Jurowski, a previous winner of the Conductor award in 2018, will lead the multi award-winning Bayerische Staatsorchester. Further details will be announced in due course. 

Founded by philanthropist Harry Hyman in 2012, the International Opera Awards aims to raise the profile of opera as an art form, recognize and reward excellence, and help to generate funds for the Opera Foundation, which provides bursaries for emerging operatic talent worldwide.

Harry Hyman said: “What another extraordinary year it has been for opera around the world, and it’s wonderful to be able to celebrate so much of that talent at the Awards. My huge congratulations to all the finalists, and I look forward to celebrating with them in Munich in October.” 

John Allison, Chair of the Jury, said: “I am excited by our shortlists, which once again reflect the vibrancy of the operatic world and the truly cosmopolitan nature of the art form. It was gratifying to see such a huge number of nominations, and I’m grateful to our hard-working jury for producing such excellent finalists — I look forward to celebrating all this talent in Munich.”

Tickets for the Awards ceremony are available from the Bayerische Staatsoper website.

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