(Photo: John-Halvdan Olsen-Halvorsen)

There is always a buzz about a competition. It’s almost palpable. Especially one as prestigious as this year’s Queen Sonja Singing Competition, it being the 30th anniversary edition. As the audience streamed into the venerable Oslo Konserthus, the talk turned to the six singers that made it to the final concert. Every single one of these singers was already a winner. After all, this half dozen was deemed best out of the 500 initial applicants from 57 countries. An added feature this year was the live-streaming of the event on the European Union supported OperaVision channel on YouTube, allowing a global audience to tune in live and to watch it for the coming six months – free of charge.

(Photo: John-Halvdan Olsen-Halvorsen)

And the winner of this year’s competition is … Soprano Kathleen O’Mara from the United States, taking the first prize of €50,000. She is currently a member of LA Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program and is a 2024 recipient of the Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation. She won a Career Grant Award from the Sullivan Foundation in 2023, and she was a 2022 winner of the Bizet Award at the Orpheus Vocal Competition.

Mezzo-soprano Meridian Prall, also from the United States, won the second prize with €10,000 prize money and bass Paweł Horodyski from Poland, took the third prize with €5000. Three finalist prizes with prize monies of €1,500 each were awarded to Vladyslav Buialskyi (baritone, Ukraine), Hannah Edmunds (soprano, Norway), Justyna Khil (soprano, Poland). The Ingrid Bjoner scholarship, available only to Norwegian singers and valued at NOK 100,000 (approx. $10,000) was awarded to Hannah Edmunds.

While the first two rounds were carried out with piano, it was the Oslo Philharmonic, conducted by Nicholas Carter, which provided the accompaniment at the final concert. Jasmin White, the first prize winner from 2023 was the moderator throughout the evening.

As a musical hors d’ouevre, the competition had arranged a recital the evening before with Swedish mezzo Rebecka Wallroth, accompanied by Sveinung Bjelland on the piano in the elegant drawing room of Oscarshall. This is a charming, neo-gothic, cozy, small royal palace, built by Danish architect Johan Henrik Niebelon on commission from King Oscar I and Queen Joséphine of Norway and Sweden in the mid-nineteenth century. Rebecka Wallroth, a finalist of the Queen Sonja Competition in 2023, chose a repertoire ranging from Ture Rangström to Alma Mahler and from Edvard Grieg to Jean Sibelius. She sang the Lieder in their original languages, understandable even to foreigners due to her clear and emotional renditions. The reception thereafter, overlooking a nearby yacht harbor, was made even more special due to the informal attendance of Queen Sonja.

And it was Queen Sonja’s entrance at the concert the following day that gave the concert its festive tone: After an orchestral fanfare, during which the entire audience stood, Her Majesty entered and sat, not in a royal box, but about row 10 on the aisle. The tickets to the event, by the way, were quite reasonably priced and available to the general public. Of course, the hall was sold-out.

Each of the six finalists had two arias – one in each half of the program. The excellent Oslo Philharmonic opened the proceedings with a most brilliant Prelude from Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin” under Nicholas Carter’s brisk baton. During intermission, one could tell that the public was trying to second guess who would be the winner, with opinions going this was and that. Whether this last concert made a major difference in the judges’ voting will never be known, but they did have plenty of opportunities in the run-up week to hear the candidates, also in rehearsals.

In today’s extremely competitive market, competitions offer young singers one of the few opportunities to be noticed by a broader audience. Thus, even those 40 singers who reached the quarter finals received considerable exposure due to the competition’s YouTube channel livestreaming it – over five hours in total! And then the semi-finals, again over five hours. Livestreaming is a major investment by the competition and can be considered a major resource for casting directors looking for fresh talent, if they care to work their way through 10 hours of material. After all, these participants had already been vetted by a preliminary jury, all of whom were members of the artistic direction of major opera houses.

After a second intermission, during which the jurors made their final deliberations, the by now familiar royal fanfare was sounded, followed by the Polonaise from “Eugene Onegin.” This definitely set the formal and festive tone for the announcement of the winners, who had, in the meantime, lined up in front of the orchestra on stage. It was then Queen Sonja herself who made the announcements and handed the prizes, which also included original artwork by the Queen.

At the reception thereafter, the opportunity arose to catch up with Jasmin White, moderator of the evening and first prize winner in 2023. Upon being asked how winning this important prize had changed her life, Jasmin answered “tremendously! We were able to pay a part of our student debt and it helped us get settled in Vienna, where I had been engaged as a member of the Vienna Volskoper ensemble.” Did the phones start ringing? “Oh yes,” Jasmin continued, “I got offered two roles at Dutch National Opera, three roles at the Met. It really gave my career a major push forward.” And what tips would Jasmin be able to give singers thinking of applying to this competition and competitions in general? “Be yourself,” Jasmin answered, “take your chosen aria and dissect it. Find what you have in common with the heroine. Take the aria apart and understand the character behind it to the point of identifying with it. Understand the emotion powering the character and how the music underscores this emotion. This will make the story-telling easier.” Jasmin is now exploring roles from Handel to Wagner and truly enjoying her new opera family at the Vienna Volksoper.

Stay tuned for further winners.