Gutierrez and Kim take top honours at Mirjam Helin Competition

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The male and female categories in the 5th International Mirjam Helin Singing Competition were won on Wednesday evening by the Korean tenor Woo-Kyung Kim and the Cuban soprano Eglise Gutierrez respectively. Both singers collected prizes of EUR 20,000 and the promise of future singing engagements. The finals were held at the National Opera House in Helsinki.
      Gutierrez, 29, also collected the Carlo Cossutta Memorial Prize. The Cuban singer did not appear overly surprised by her eventual victory, as she had been a hot favourite from the early rounds of the competition, not least because of her charismatic stage presence.
      For 26-year-old Kim, however, victory seemed to come as a slight shock, as he felt he had underachieved in the final, at least relative to his performances in the preliminary round and semi-finals.
     
The Jury Chairman Tom Krause was of a very different opinion, praising Kim’s vocal technique in the strongest possible terms. Krause also commented on the high standard of all the eight finalists, though he admitted that some had not been at their best by the end of the gruelling two-week competition.
      The 2nd prize and EUR 15,000 went to Russia’s Jekaterina Gubanova (mezzo-soprano) in the female category and to the Turkish bass Burak Bilgili among the men, and the 3rd prizes of EUR 10,000 each went to Karen Wierzba (soprano) from Canada and to the American baritone Timothy Mix.
      None of the five Finnish entrants made it through to the finals, but the prize for a young talent went to the home-grown baritone Arttu Kataja, 25. The award for the best rendition of a Finnish song was taken by Russian tenor Dmitri Voropayev, who also collected the 4th prize of EUR 5,000, alongside Russian soprano Olga Šuršina.
      The Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition is arranged every five years, and was first held in 1984.


Links:
  Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition

Helsingin Sanomat