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Berlin's Komische Oper won the award for best opera company
while the Bregenz Festival, held in a small town on the shores
of Lake Constance in Austria, was named the best festival.
Neither Gerhaher nor Harteros was on hand to accept their awards
at a gala held in London's Savoy Theatre, but David Pountney,
the British general director of the Bregenz Festival, said the
event should serve as a lesson that the arts can be good for
business.
"I'd just like to say that Bregenz is a little town of 28,000
people which has created a festival that attracts over 200,000
people a year and brings in 160 million euros ($170 million)
every year into that region," Pountney said as he accepted the
award.
"That is a model that our politicians would do well to study:
great art can be great economics."
The award for best new opera production went to the Birmingham
Opera Company for its staging of "Khovanskygate", an adaptation
of the Russian composer Mussorgsky's rarely heard "Khovanshchina".
Graham Vick, the artistic director of Birmingham Opera, said the
production had proved that opera could attract a younger
audience, and more diverse participation, than is generally
thought to be the case.
"Our average audience is under 40 and 'Khovanskygate' had 200
volunteer participants whose average age was 28, and 50 percent
of them were black or of mixed ethnicity," Vick said.
"If we're talking about the future (of opera), that's what we
need to talk about," he said.
Russian-born conductor Semyon Bychkov won the award for best
conductor while Britain's Richard Jones took the award for best
director.
The Opera Magazine readers' awards for best singers went to
German tenor Jonas Kaufmann and Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak.
Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera from 1983
to 2014, was given a lifetime achievement award.
(Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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