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Swedish soprano Josefine Mindus is the overall winner of the second edition of Aria Borealis, the international competition for singers specialising in early music, held on 2 and 4 October at Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo.
Sopranos Antonia Ortner (Austria) and Maija Rautasuo (Finland) share second prize, with Rautasuo also receiving the audience prize. One of the distinctive features of Aria Borealis is that all eight artists selected for the public rounds were already considered prizewinners following the video selection and each received an award.
For the semi-final, they were asked to devise a twenty-minute chamber-music programme; the final brought them together in “Transforming Fire”, a semi-staged production built around Handel, with the Finnish Baroque Orchestra and musicians from the partner Nordic ensembles. The other prizewinners include French countertenor Virgile Pellerin, Norwegian soprano Mari Aschehoug, Croatian mezzo-soprano Lucija Ercegovac, German tenor Martin Höhler and American bass-baritone Lucas Zuehl.
Competition website: https://ariaborealis.com/
Josefine Mindus’s website: https://www.josefinemindus.com/
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