Prizewinners Announced at the SWR Young Opera Stars 2025

Chelsea Zurflüh and Alexander Grassauer were named as the overall winners of the competition

The SWR Young Opera Stars competition has been running for more than twenty years. Six young singers are invited to each edition to compete for the Emmerich Smola Förderpreis, named in memory of the German conductor who died in 2011.

In 2025, the six semi-finalists were Chelsea Zurflüh (soprano), Jessica Niles (soprano), Tamara Obermayr, (mezzo-soprano), Alberto Robert (tenor), Felix Gygli (baritone), and Alexander Grassauer (bass-baritone). Each singer performed a selection of arias with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern and conductor Killian Farrell.

Following the audience vote, Chelsea Zurflüh and Alexander Grassauer were named as the overall winners of the competition. In addition, Zurflüh received the Emmerich Smola prize, chosen by members of the orchestra.

Hailing from both Switzerland and the Seychelles, Zurflüh studied with Barbara Locher in Bern. Upon graduating with her master's, she joined the International Opera Studio in Zurich. During her time there, Zurflüh sang roles including Barbarina (Le Nozze di Figaro) and as Atalanta (Serse). At the Theater Biel-Solothurn she sang the title role in Heidi celebrates Christmas, and at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music she sang in Vivaldi’s La Fida Ninfa.

She is a laureate of the Cesti Competition in Innsbruck (2022), the Mozart Competition in Salzburg (2023), and the Otto Edelmann Competition (2024), and she won the Haydn competition in Rohrau (2024).

Grassauer is from Austria, and studied initially with Sigrid Rennert — before pursuing further studies with Karlheinz Hanser and Florian Boesch in Vienna. A laureate of the Brahms Competition, the Hugo Wolf Competition and "FutureVoices", he is also a "Young Talent" at the Wiener Konzerthaus, and will make his Bayreuth debut in the present season.

His roles include Masetto (Don Giovanni), Marchese (La Traviata), Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), narrator (Die Zauberflöte) and (Die Fledermaus) at companies including Semperoper Dresden, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, and more.