• PostedMay 05, 2025
  • AuthorEd Harsh
Back Row, Winners L to R: Tamara Bounazou, George Robarts, Eleonora Hu; Front Row, Judges, L to R: Catherine Malfitano, Rob Berman, Alison Moritz

For the first time, three top prizes and two discretionary awards
all earned by artists from outside the United States.

$93,000 awarded to the eleven finalists.

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music has announced the winners of the twenty-seventh annual Lenya Competition, which took place Saturday 3 May at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York. George Robarts of Great Hormead, UK took home the First Prize of $25,000. Tamara Bounazou of Paris, France claimed the $20,000 Second Prize, and Eleonora Hu of Delft, Netherlands won the $15,000 Third Prize. Judges described Robarts’s first-place performance with enthusiastic phrases such as “phenomenal actor,” “every moment spontaneous,” and “impeccable delivery of lyrics.” Especially taken with his performance of Kurt Weill’s “Muschel von Margate,” they awarded it a rare near-perfect score. An edited version of the Finals will be streamed free and on-demand to audiences worldwide beginning the week of 12 May via the Kurt Weill Foundation website (kwf.org).

Each finalist performed a continuous fifteen-minute program of four contrasting numbers, including a selection by Kurt Weill, before a jury of three esteemed artists whose careers mirror the values of the Competition: Broadway conductor and music director Rob Berman, multi-hyphenate singer-actor-director-teacher Catherine Malfitano, and stage director Alison Moritz.

Queen Hezumuryango of Bujumbura, Burundi and Gemma Nha of Sydney, Australia each won a $6,000 discretionary award for outstanding performance of an individual selection. Each of the remaining contestants received a finalist prize of $3,000: Crystal Glenn, Jonathan Heller, Olivia LaPointe, Rebecca Madeira, Schyler Vargas, Ian Williams.

With its focus on both acting and vocal skills, the Lenya Competition celebrates talented singing actors of all nationalities who can “do it all” across the dynamic landscape of music theater. This year’s edition featured the most international field in the Competition’s history, dating to its founding in 1998 by Kim Kowalke, President and CEO of the Kurt Weill Foundation. The eleven finalists represented seven countries on four continents, having emerged from a group of twenty semifinalists who had themselves been previously selected from an initial pool of 260 video applicants—thirty percent of whom came from outside the US. The Competition features a unique semifinal judging-coaching format, through which double Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori and Broadway and opera leading lady Lisa Vroman narrowed the field to the final eleven.

This year’s Competition incorporated for the first time an Audience Choice Award determined by listeners based on an additional “crowd-pleasing” number performed in an evening concert preceding the awards ceremony. The artist receiving the most votes among the nearly 900 cast, and a $3,000 prize, was Rebecca Madeira, who performed “When He Sees Me” from Waitress.

The evening concert and awards ceremony were co-hosted by Ted Chapin, Chair of the Kurt Weill Foundation Board of Trustees, and Brady Sansone, the Foundation’s Director of Programs.