Ana Rita Coelho, who has secured a contract with the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos as part of her prize, also won the Audience Award at the festival, according to the competition’s organizing committee in a statement released today.
The Cascais Opera concluded on Sunday with the announcement of the winners at the Grande Auditório of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
The main prizes were contested by eight finalists.
In addition to Ana Rita Coelho, the top honors included mezzo-soprano Anna Tetruashvili from Israel, who received the Teresa Berganza First Prize for the best female voice, and Serbian baritone Viktor Aksentijevic, who was awarded the Maurício Bensaude First Prize for the best male voice.
The Carlos Gomes Prize, which includes a performance at the Amazonas Opera Festival in Manaus, Brazil, was awarded to South Korean Sunu Sun.
Other singers achieving success with contracts at cultural institutions include Madalena Oliveira Martins, Ester Ferraro, Milan Perisic, and Jean Miannay with the Mafra Music Festival, Laura Brasó with the Cascais and Oeiras Chamber Orchestra, JaeWoung Lee with the International Piano Festival of the Algarve, Ju Hyeok Lee with the International Marvão Festival, and Sehyung Kyung with the Istanbul State Opera.
The contestants performed before a jury chaired by baritone Sergei Leiferkus, comprising soprano Anna Samuil of the Berlin Opera, Eline de Kat, artistic coordinator of the Monte Carlo Opera, Ivan van Kalmthout, former artistic director of the National Theatre of S. Carlos, soprano Juliane Banse, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore, and producer Pal Moe from the Glyndebourne Opera, United Kingdom.
In the finals, the singers were accompanied by the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, conducted by maestro Antonio Pirolli.
From April 23 to Sunday, the Cascais Opera gathered 30 singers from 18 countries, selected from 340 applicants spanning 49 nationalities.
The Cascais Opera is co-organized by the Association CIVOC, the Cascais City Council, and the D. Luis I Foundation.
The contest is part of Opera LatinoAmérica, the largest network of theaters in Latin America, comprising more than 45 theaters, festivals, and opera companies among other disciplines.
