Soprano Caitlin Gotimer and tenor Omer Kobiljak are named Finalists at the 2023 Operalia Competition. They will perform in Final Gala Concert with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra at the Artscape Theatre Centre in Cape Town, South Africa on Sunday, 5 November. The concert will be streamed live on Medici.tv as well as the Plácido Domingo and Operalia Facebook accounts from 18:00 local time (17:00 CET).
Operalia was founded in 1993 by Plácido Domingo to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today. Operalia’s goal is to attract singers between the ages of twenty and thirty-two, of all voice types from and all over the world, to have them audition and be heard by a panel of distinguished international personalities, in the most prestigious and competitive showcase in the world.
American soprano Caitlin Gotimer, praised for her “voice of truly heroic proportions” (PGH in the Round), holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Bachelor of Music in Voice from Binghamton University. In the 2023/24 season, she makes her debut as Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette with Arizona Opera, her Palm Beach Opera and Dayton Opera debuts as Tosca, and her Santa Fe Symphony debut as the soprano soloist in Handel’s Messiah. The 2022/23 season marked Ms. Gotimer’s exciting return to Arizona Opera for her grand debut in the title role of Tosca. She also made her Dallas Opera debut as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte and joined The Santa Fe Opera’s Apprentice Program, where she covered Tosca.
Tenor Omer Kobiljak, born in Bosnia, has been praised by Bachtrack for his “high, luminous tenor.” Mr. Kobiljak was trained by David Thorner, first at the Konservatorium Winterthur, where he studied from 2008 to 2013, and subsequently at the Kalaidos Fachhochschule in Aarau, Switzerland. Since 2010, he has also attended master classes given by Jane Thorner-Mengedoht, David Thorner, and Jens Fuhr. During the 2023/2024 season, he returns to the ensemble at Opernhaus Zürich, where he sings Macduff in Macbeth conducted by Daniele Squeo, Vicomte Cascada in Die Lustige Witwe conducted by Patrick Hahn, Froh in Das Rheingold conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, Spitzel in Andrea Chénier conducted by Marco Armiliato, and Tebaldo in I vespri siciliani conducted by Ivan Repušić.
Photo credits: Caitlin Gotimer – Courtesy of the Artists; Omer Kobiljak – Artan Hursever