Kazakhstan's Opera Ball Award finalists announced

Six finalists of the Opera Ball Award has been named, Tengrinews reports referring to the organizers of the event.

The Opera Ball Award was founded by the Culture Development Foundation in 2014 with a mission to develop opera in the country, to instill love to classic music among all generations and give an opportunity to young opera singers from all over the world to demonstrate their talents and to be heard by the world’s honored opera experts.

This year, the award’s jury are Director of Music Administration of Vienna State Opera Thomas Lausmann, Musical Director of Opera National de Paris Jean-Philippe Thiellay, Artistic Director of the Arena di Verona Paolo Gavazzeni and Askar Buribayev, Director of the Almaty-based State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet named after Abay.

The jury accomplished a quite challenging task of selecting six finalists out of 40 participants from 9 countries.

The six finalists are Ilya Silchukov from Belarus, Alphiya Karimova from Kazakhstan, Ryan Green from Austria, Damir Saduakhasov from Kazakhstan, Oksana Davydenko from Kazakhstan and Anastasia Kozhukharova also from Kazakhstan.

They will compete for the right to be named The Best Male Voice and The Best Female Voice by performing along with an orchestra in front of the juries during the final on June 26.

The winners will be announced the next day at the VII Opera Ball that will be held on June 27 in Almaty. Apart from a cash prize of $20,000 for each of them, the two winners will also have a brilliant opportunity to perform on the stage together with the world-renowned French tenor Roberto Alagna.

The event will be hosted by Miss Universe-2015 Paulina Vega from Columbia and Gediminas Taranda, the artistic director of the Imperial Russian Ballet.

Last year, Kazakhstan-born opera singer Maria Mudryak, who now works and lives in Italy, became the winner of the Opera Ball Award. The young diva, a graduate of the prestigious Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and the Milan Music Academy, recorded her first solo album at the age of 5 and was named the youngest singer in the world by the Guinness Book.

By Assel Satubaldina