Brian Jagde Wins Operalia Competition Awards

This year’s world opera competition was held at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, NCPA, in Beijing, China from June 4-10 and featured American, Russian, Chinese, Mongolian and Italian winners. Brian Jagde, 32, took home a second ex-equo prize, which was described as being very rare and a testimony to the quality of the singers in this year’s competition and the difficult decision that was given to the jury. Jagde was also awarded the male Birgit Nilsson Prize for Wagner-Strauss repertoire. Other winners included Janai Brugger, Yunpeng Wang, Amartuvshin, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Guanqun Yu, Nadezhda Karyazina, Roman Burdenko and Antonio Poll.

This was the 20th edition of the Operalia Competition, which is hosted each year by Plácido Domingo and sets out to find the next generation of opera stars. Operalia receives nearly one thousand applications each year and 40 singers are invited to take part. Mr. Domingo officially announced that the 21st edition of Operalia will take place in Verona, Italy from August 19-25, 2013.