About Us

The primary goal of the Paris Opera Competition is to promote the careers of the young singers it has discovered and therefore it pays as much attention to the organization of concerts in which the prize-winners participate, as it does to the Competitions themselves. Since it was founded in 2010, there have been four Paris Opera Competitions. It was for the 2nd Competition (2012) that the organizers came up with the original concept of concert-competition. Nine young singers, finalists at prestigious international competitions, would be given the opportunity to appear at a leading Paris concert venue, in addition to which half of them would receive awards — two from the Competition itself, and two audience sympathy prizes.

The 2014 Paris Opera Competition followed the traditional format. But the January 2015 Competition adopted a totally novel form: first it took place two months (instead of two years as per the Competition rules) after the 2014 Competition which preceded it; second, it again took the form of a concert. There were five prizes. The fifth prize was awarded for the best performance of a Mozart aria and, for this reason, the 2015 Paris Opera Competition was called Les Mozart de l’Opera — another innovation.

Among the 2015 Competition participants were three Bolshoi Theatre soloists and one Bolshoi Young Artists Opera Program member who is actively involved in the Theatre’s repertoire. And this is not surprising for our Young Artists Opera Program has been a staunch supporter of the Paris Competition since 2013, while its Artistic Director Dmitri Vdovin is a member of the Competition’s authoritative jury. At the 2015 Concert-Competition which took place on January 23 at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées the lst prize and audience sympathy prize was awarded to the Bolshoi Theatre Young Artist Opera Program soloist Bogdan Volkov for his distinguished interpretation of Lensky’s aria from Act 2 of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onega while the 2nd prize was garnered by Venera Gimadieva for her performance of Amina’s aria (Ah! Non credea mirarti) from Act Two of Bellini’s opera La Sonnambula.