{"id":7425,"date":"2025-10-27T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=7425"},"modified":"2025-10-27T14:00:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:00:29","slug":"2025-operalia-competition-romanian-baritone-mihai-damian-wins-top-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=7425","title":{"rendered":"2025 Operalia Competition: Romanian baritone Mihai Damian wins top prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Baritone <strong>Mihai Damian<\/strong>, a soloist of the Romanian National Opera in Cluj-Napoca, has won the Male Voice category\u2019s first prize at this year\u2019s edition of <em>Operalia<\/em>, the competition for young opera artists established by Pl\u00e1cido Domingo.<\/p>\n<p>He also won the competition\u2019s Audience Award and the special award offered by the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria, where the competition was held this year.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-nine-year-old Damian studied at the Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca, where he pursued specializations in Conducting and Classical Singing. He has taken part in numerous masterclasses led by artists such as Ram\u00f3n Vargas, Ruxandra Donose, and Leontina V\u0103duva, and has been awarded prizes at national and international competitions. Among the accolades he received are the Second Prize at the \u00c9va Marton International Singing Competition in Budapest, the First Prize at the Nouvelles \u00c9toiles in France, as well as the Grand Prize at the Alexandru F\u0103rca\u0219 Singing Competition, held in Cluj-Napoca. At this year\u2019s Musicrit Gala, he was named \u2018Revelation of the Year\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Damian is the fifth Romanian artist to be awarded at the competition, after mezzosoprano Carmen Opri\u0219anu, who won third prize in 1995, tenors \u0218tefan Pop and Ioan Hotea, who won first prizes in 2010 and 2015, and soprano Adela Zaharia, the winner of first prize in 2017.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Photo: Ministerul Culturii Facebook Page)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>simona@romania-insider.com<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baritone Mihai Damian, a soloist of the Romanian National Opera in Cluj-Napoca, has won the Male Voice category\u2019s first prize at this year\u2019s edition of Operalia, the competition for young opera artists established by Pl\u00e1cido Domingo. He also won the competition\u2019s Audience Award and the special award offered by the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}