24/7 Tass 2
MOSCOW, July 24 (Itar-Tass) —— Thirteen singers, including four Russians, will perform today in the final stage of the Operalia contest together with an outstanding Spanish tenor Placido Domingo. The final stage of the prestige show, which is for the first time organised in the Russian capital, will take place in the Moscow Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Academic Musical Theatre.
Each of the 13 finalists, selected by the jury, will demonstrate skills on the stage with Placido Domingo, which is already a victory for the participants who had passed all the hearings. Domingo this evening will conduct the orchestra board, which will accompany the contestants.
Among the finalists there are four representatives of Russia. They come from Moscow’s Novaya Opera /New Opera/, from the Youth Programme of the Bolshoi Theatre and from the Academy of Young Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre.
The first prize of the Operalia contest is 30,000 dollars, the second – 20,000 and the third is ten thousand dollars. Each of them will be given both to a male and a female voice.
Operalia, the World Opera Competition, was founded in 1993 by Placido Domingo to discover and help launch the careers of the best young opera singers of today. His goal is to attract singers of all voice categories and from all around the globe and to let them be heard by a panel of distinguished international opera personalities, in the most prestigious and competitive forum in the world.
Under Domingo’s artistic guidance, Operalia is a competition open to all voice categories for singers from 18 to 30 years of age who are ready to perform on the world’ s great opera stages.
Operalia takes place every year in a different city in the world. The competition was organised in Mexico, Madrid, Bordeaux, Tokyo, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Washington, Valencia, Milan, Paris, Puerto Rico and other cities.
“Russian singers have won prizes so often that it is time to organise the contest in the country, which has one of greatest schools of singing,” Domingo said.