SWR – Südwestrundfunk
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Advancement award for young opera stars goes to Eva Zalenga and Dumitru Mitu / Orchestra award for Eva Zalenga / Award ceremony on January 21st in Landau
The Emmerich Smola sponsorship award goes this year to the young opera talents Eva Zalenga (soprano) and Dumitru Mitu (tenor). The winners of the prize were chosen on Sunday, January 21st, 2023 from six candidates by Ppublic decision selected. The award ceremony took place as part of the gala concert organized by SWR in the Art Nouveau festival hall in Landau. In addition to the sponsorship award, the Emmerich Smola Orchestra Prize of the German Radio Philharmonic 2023 was awarded. He also starts Eva Zalenga. The concert was broadcast live on the internet SWRclassic.de transmitted and is available online as video-on-demand.
Emmerich Smola Promotional Prize and Orchestra Prize
After the event last year only took place with piano accompaniment in the Fruchthalle Kaiserslautern due to the pandemic, the concert could take place again this year in the Art Nouveau Festival Hall in Landau. The young opera talents were accompanied by the German Radio Philharmonic under the direction of Valentin Uryupin. In addition, the orchestra voted on the Emmerich Smola Orchestra Prize of the German Radio Philharmonic 2023. The award winner Eva Zalenga is invited to another concert with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie. The German Radio Philharmonic is one of the major ARD radio symphony orchestras, jointly supported by Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Saarländisches Rundfunk (SR).
Eva Zalenga (soprano), born in Biberach (BW) in 1994, received singing lessons at an early age and at the age of 14 was a prizewinner at “Jugend musiziert”. She studied in Dresden and Leipzig and received inspiration from Vesselina Kasarova, Rudolf Piernay, Christine Schäfer, Olaf Bär and Hedwig Fassbender. She is a scholarship holder of the Lotte Lehmann Academy and was awarded the Deutschlandstipendium. She was a prizewinner at the National Singing Competition 2020 and winner of the singing competition at the Chamber Opera Schloss Rheinsberg. Her great passion is also lieder, which she cultivates intensively with the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. She was on the concert stage in the Kulturpalast in Dresden and in the Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad. In the 2019/20 season she was part of the ensemble at the St. Gallen Theater and was engaged at the Leipzig Opera, the Dresden State Operetta and the Nordhausen Theater. In 2021 she made her debut at the Staatstheater Hannover. She is currently a member of the ensemble at Theater Regensburg, where she can be heard as Susanna, Adele and Sophie. In the current season, she is the Miss Bürstner and the Blue Fairy. After her debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the next on her agenda is the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen.
Dumitru Mitu (tenor) was born in 1992 in Cricovia, a small town near Chisinau, the capital of the Republic of Moldova. As a teenager he took singing lessons at the music school Valeriu Poleacov. In 2016 he completed his Bachelor of Music at the Academy for Music, Theater and Fine Arts in Chisinau. He then continued his studies up to the Master of Arts, which he received in 2018. He took master classes with Dmitry Vdovin and received important impulses from Semyon Skigin, Lyubov Orfenova, Giulio Zappa and Alessandro Amoretti. In the 2016/17 season he took part in the Young Artists Opera Program at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Since 2017, Dumitru has been a member of the ensemble at the National Opera and Ballet Theater in the Moldovan capital. There he embodied Lenski in “Eugene Onegin” and Count Vodémont in “Iolanta” by Peter Tchaikovsky. His repertoire also includes Alfredo in Verdi’s “La traviata” and Eisenstein in “Die Feldermaus” by Johann Strauss. In 2022 he sang in the Chisinau Opera House’s New Year’s Gala and received third prize at the “New Voices” International Singing Competition in Gütersloh. At the Moldavian singing competition Alexei Starcea he was awarded the 1st prize.
Emmerich Smola
The prizes are named after the conductor Emmerich Smola (1922-2011), who lived and worked in Kaiserslautern. The Emmerich Smola Prize, which has been awarded annually since 2004, is one of the most important international prizes for young singing talents. The nominated young opera stars present themselves to the concert audience with two arias each. The concert audience uses voting cards to decide who receives the prize.
Awards ceremony on the web, radio and television
The concert was streamed live on the internet and is available as video-on-demand SWRclassic.de and SWR2 to disposal. Concert highlights can be seen on Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 8:15 a.m. on SWR television. Immediately afterwards at 9 a.m., SWR television broadcasts a 45-minute report on the musical funding project. The full-length concert can be heard on Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 8:03 p.m. on SWR2 Oper.
Further information on the awardee:
Artist biographies are available at: www.swr.de/jungeopernstars
More information on: http://swr.li/emmerich-smola-foerderpreis-2023
photos on www.ARD-foto.de
SWR networks newsletter: http://x.swr.de/s/vernetztnewsletter
Press contact:
Grit Krüger, Tel. 07221 929 22285, [email protected]
Original content from: SWR – Südwestrundfunk, transmitted by news aktuell
