Correction: A representative from the Teatro Massimo di Palermo will not be in attendance as part of the jury. 

The Elena Obraztsova Singing Competition has announced the jury members for the 2024 edition which will take place between July 21 and 27, 2024.

The competition, which is sponsored by Russia’s Minister of Culture, will see Larisa Gergieva, the Artistic Director of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers heading the jury.

The jury will also include two Western agencies  Alessandro Ariosi of Ariosi Management, and Teddy Gerstel of Gerstel International Opera Management as well as Tamas Bator, Artistic Advisor of the Hungarian State Opera.

Ariosi Management currently manages such artists as Aida Garifullina, Juliana Grigoryan, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Clémentine Margaine, Vittorio Grigolo, Erwin Schrott, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Leo Nucci, and Igor Golovatenko, among many others. Gerstel currently works with Elena Maximova, and Serena Farnocchia, among others.

The competition will take place in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Obraztsova was a Soviet and Russian mezzo who was awarded the People’s Artist of the USSR in 1976 and Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990. She was an international artist who performed internationally but was a strong supporter of the Soviet Union and in 1974 denounced Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya for their support for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. In 2014, she signed a letter in support of the annexation of Crimea alongside 511 artists. She died at the age of 75 in 2015.