Jakob Hoffmann wins 5th International Haydn Competition
The Munich baritone Jakob Hoffmann is the winner of the 5th International Haydn Competition for Classical Song and Aria, endowed with 8,000 euros, which took place over the Whitsun weekend in Rohrau Castle (Bruck/Leitha district, Lower Austria). Hoffmann also won two special prizes.
The Haydn Competition, which takes place within the framework of the classical music festival "Haydnregion Niederösterreich", is aimed at young singers from all over the world with special talent and training in the field of lieder and opera and focuses on the lieder and aria repertoire from the period of Viennese Classicism.
The jury was chaired by Kammersängerin Angelika Kirchschlager in 2023. After three days of competition, a total of eight prizes were awarded to five singers after the final concert on Sunday. The first main prize went to Jakob Hoffmann, who also received the special prize from Bühne Baden and the special prize for the best song interpretation.
The Munich-born baritone Jakob Hoffmann (*1995) began his bachelor's degree in singing with Andreas Macco at the University Mozarteum Salzburg in October 2014, after his initial lessons with Florian Dengler, and has already participated in several productions of the Department of Opera and Music Theatre. In 2019 Jakob Hoffmann began the master's programme in Opera and Music Theatre at the University Mozarteum Salzburg in the opera class of Kai Röhrig and Karoline Gruber / Rosamund Gilmore, as well as continuing in the voice class of Andreas Macco, which he completed in 2022. Since beginning his Master's degree, he has already appeared on stage in several opera productions. Thus in the roles of Acamante in the opera "La Critica" by N. Jommelli, the film director in the opera "Radames" by P. Eötvös (2020, directed by Christian Poewe), Seikyo in "Tea: A Mirror of Soul" by Tan Dun (2020, directed by Wolf Widder), Papageno in "Die Zauberflöte" by W. A. Mozart (2021, directed by Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka), of Jupiter in "Orpheus in the Underworld" by Jacques Offenbach (2021, directed by Rosamund Gilmore), as well as in the role of Cavaliere Astolfi in "Il Campiello" by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (2022, directed by Rosamund Gilmore). In the winter semester of 2022 he began his Master's degree in Lied and Oratorio with Stephan Genz and Andreas Schmidt.
His engagements have already taken him through Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria, including with the ensemble "BachWerkVokal Salzburg" under the direction of Gordon Safari, of which he has been a member since 2019. Jakob Hoffmann is a prizewinner of the International Haydn Competition in Rohrau 2023 and will be a permanent ensemble member of the Eduard von Winterstein Theatre in Annaberg-Buchholz from the coming 2023/24 season.
