Pravdina took the €30,000 first prize in Budapest, as well as the audience award and a special prize for the best performance of a Liszt song.
Russian soprano Valentina Pravdina has won the seventh Éva Marton International Singing Competition, held at Budapest’s Liszt Academy.
Pravdina received the competition’s €30,000 first prize, along with the €5,000 special prize for the best performance of a Liszt song and the audience award. In Saturday’s final, she performed arias from Verdi’s La traviata and Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus with the Orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera conducted by Kálmán Szennai.
South Korean bass Seokjun Kim won the €20,000 second prize, while Armenian soprano Arpi Sinanyan received the €10,000 third prize. Georgian soprano Tata Razmadze was awarded Éva Marton’s personal special prize, also worth €10,000.
Born in 1996, Pravdina is a soloist at Moscow’s Helikon Opera, where her repertoire includes Violetta in La traviata, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Mimì in La bohème and the title role in Iolanta. She previously won second prize at the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in 2025.
The competition attracted a record 265 applications from 40 countries, with 80 singers taking part in the live rounds and 12 reaching the orchestral final. The international jury was chaired by Hungarian soprano Éva Marton and included Peter Mario Katona, casting director of the Royal Opera House in London, and representatives of the Bolshoi Theatre, Hungarian State Opera and Liszt Academy.
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