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musicOMH, 23 April 2013 |
by Melanie Eskenazi
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Spotlight: International Opera Awards 2013
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Kaufmann, Frankfurt Opera, Pappano and Stemme shine in the inaugural ‘Opera Oscars’
The evening after he had laid us all out in the aisles with his
Verdi and Wagner at the Festival Hall, Jonas Kaufmann had his pre-eminence
confirmed when he won both the award for the Best Male Singer and the
Readers’ Award as voted for by readers of Opera magazine, at the first
International Opera Awards ceremony at the Park Lane Hilton.
Kaufmann
seemed a trifle bemused to have been given two awards, and if these Awards
are to become the ‘Oscars of Opera,’ let’s hope all the future recipients
are as disarmingly modest and generous as Mr Kaufmann and Sir Antonio
Pappano, the other ‘double winner’ who took the awards for Best Conductor
and for the DVD of Il Trittico.
The award for Best Female
Singer went to Nina Stemme, justly deserved for her many great performances,
and that for the Best Young Singer went to the soprano Sophie Bevan, to be
added to her growing total of awards and critical accolades, sure to be
enhanced by her Pamina next month at Covent Garden.
Best Opera
Company went to Frankfurt Opera, which under its intendant Bernd Loebe has
achieved almost full houses for a repertoire which balances standards with
less frequently performed works. Sir George Christie was the obvious choice
for the Lifetime Achievement Award, and awards for Best New Production and
Best World Premiere went to the Netherlands Opera’s The Legend of the
Invisible City of Kitezh (Rimsky-Korsakov) and George Benjamin’s Written on
Skin respectively.
Many wonderful evenings at the opera house and in
the theatre have been made more so, and many ghastly ones have been saved
from disaster, courtesy of the poetic, inspired lighting of Paule Constable,
so it was a joy to see that she won the Lighting Designer award. Daniele
Rustioni was the clear choice for winner of the Best Newcomer (Conductor or
Director) award, and he Metropolitan Opera’s Orchestra was voted the best in
its field.
The awards were a joint endeavour by Opera magazine and
the British businessman Harry Hyman, with the intention of widening the
audience for opera; the Evening Standard (whose Editor presented one of
Kaufmann’s awards) supported the venture, and some of the proceeds from the
event will go towards funding bursaries to encourage emergent opera stars.
Do we really need yet more awards, given that we already have several? Yes,
we do, when they concentrate on high quality performances and artists such
as these. |
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