By Alkis Karmpaliotis
Founder of AppreciateOpera.org
On Sunday, March 17, the Metropolitan Opera announced the winners of its annual Laffont Competition.
The Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition is a prestigious program designed to discover and support promising young singers in their development. Over 1,000 people audition each season, hoping to make it to the famed Grand Finals Concert, where they have the chance to perform on the Met stage with the Met orchestra. Winners of the competition take home a slew of cash prizes, and, more importantly, the opportunity to kickstart careers in opera, starting at the Met. Many of the world's most successful opera stars in the last century participated in or won the Laffont Competition, including Jessye Norman, Renée Fleming, Sondra Radvanovsky, Lawrence Brownlee, and Anthony Roth Costanzo.
This year's winners were:
Tenor Daniel Espinal (Sarasota, Florida, USA)
Soprano Lydia Grindatto (Tijeras, New Mexico, USA)
Baritone Navasard Hakobyan (Yerevan, Armenia)
Mezzo-Soprano Meridian Prall (Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA)
Soprano Emily Richter (Arlington, Virginia, USA)
The winners each took home $20,000, while all remaining finalists earned $10,000. Congratulations to all finalists for this impressive accomplishment!
My name is Alkis Karmpaliotis, I'm a Junior at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and I founded AppreciateOpera.org in 2019 when I was 12 years old. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out some of my other articles and interviews!