The second edition of the International Competition for Opera Conductors, organised by the Opéra royal de Wallonie Liège, has crowned the Peruvian Dayner Tafur-Diaz, who will be invited to conduct an opera production in Liège during the 2023-2024 season.

Born in 1998 in Chimbote (Peru), Dayner Tafur-Díaz studied trumpet and piano in his native country before turning to conducting, which he will study at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart from 2019. He has worked with numerous orchestras in Germany, including the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, the Württemberg Philharmonie Reutlingen, the Philharmonie Baden-Baden, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz and the Badische Philharmonie Pforzheim.

The second prize of the competition went to Giulio Cilona (Belgium, USA), who will be invited to conduct a young audience production. The third prize went to Luis Toro Araya (Chile), who will be hired as an assistant for an opera production.

The Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège and the members of the jury would like to warmly congratulate the winners as well as all the candidates who took part in this second edition of the International Competition for Opera Conductors, and to thank them for the beautiful moments of music that they made us experience throughout the competition. We wish them every success in their respective careers.

Our most sincere thanks also go to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, to its General Director Daniel Weissmann and to all of his teams for the warmth of their welcome to the Philharmonic Hall, thus enabling us to maintain the competition during the work in progress at the Opera.

Finally, we would like to thank the Polycarpe Foundation for its support since the first edition of the Competition, the Province of Liège for its special support during this second edition, as well as the Cristallerie du Val Saint-Lambert for the realization of the Crystal Baguette given to the winner of the First Grand Prize.

We look forward to seeing you in February 2025 for the third edition of the International Opera Conductors’ Competition!