© Die Fotografen

French mezzo-soprano Mathilde Ortscheidt has been named the winner of Innsbruck Festival of Early Music’s 14th Cesti Competition.

Ortscheidt wowed the jury with arias “Dille, che nel mio seno serbo” from “Arianna in Creta” by Georg Friedrich Handel and “Ferri, ceppi, sangue, morte” from the opera “L’incoronazione di Dario” by Antonio Vivaldi.

British soprano Charlotte Bowden came in second place and baritone Giacomo Nanni from Italy came in third. The French bass-baritone Alexandre Baldo won the audience prize. The young talent prize and one of the special prizes went to soprano Neima Fischer from Germany. The special prize winner receives an engagement with Il Gusto Barocco and Jörg Halubek. Baritone Rory Green from Ireland won the second special prize which secures a concert part at Resonanzen Wien within the Festival della Valle d’Itria,

The winners listed above were chosen out of nearly 200 candidates from 43 different countries. In the end, nine participants made it to the final, where they appeared in front of the jury and the audience in the Haus der Musik Innsbruck. As a compulsory program for the finale, the singers had to present an aria from George Frideric Handel’s opera “Arianna in Creta”. Next year this opera will be performed as part of the Baroque Opera: Jung at the festival.

The Cesti Competition was founded in 2010 by Alessandro De Marchi. It is named in honor of the Italian composer Pietro Antonio Cesti, who made Innsbruck a center of Italian opera north of the Alps in the mid-17th century,