Jacopo Salvatori Has Won the Composition Competition of Oper Leipzig

Jacopo Salvatori was named the winner of the second Oper Leipzig Composition Competition 2021. The theme for this year’s competition was Wahrheiten, meaning truths. Salvatori’s winning piece was entitled "we wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we shall die with our families". The Audience Prize was awarded to Alberto Marcantonio for his work "Truth and Fiction". The members of this year’s jury included Salome Kammer from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, Prof. Gerd Kühr from the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz, Joscha Schaback, Senior Promotion Manager of Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, and Olaf Wegener, project manager at Deutscher Musikrat. The jury has been chaired by Prof. Ulf Schirmer, Intendant and General Music Director of the Oper Leipzig. The aim of the competition of the opera in Leipzig is not only to promote young artists, but also to encourage them to engage musically with socially relevant issues with focus on the voice as the most original human instrument.

Jacopo Salvatori was born in Fiesole, Italy in 1986. He has played piano since the age of 15, and took his first lessons with Prof. Tiziano Mealli at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. He studied piano and jazz at one of Italy’s most important conservatories, graduating summa cum laude. He also received chamber music training from such renowned musicians as Dario de Rosa, Enrico Bronzi, Konstantin Bogino, Boris Petrushansky, and Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy. He most recently completed a master’s in composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich as a student of Moritz Eggert. He has divided his time between Berlin and Munich since 2011, working as a composer and as a pianist for new music. Numerous works of his have seen their world premieres under the auspices of music festivals and concert series. Salvatori additionally co-founded the collective Breakout Ensemble with two colleagues, and their concerts have been broadcast by the Bayerischer Rundfunk and on Sky TV’s Arte channel. As a performing pianist, he has cultivated a long-standing relationship with the OnClassical label, which has released five CDs of his recordings of Claude Debussy. He was an Artist in Residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2017, thanks to a grant from the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Culture. His first opera, a collaboration with Tom Smith entitled “How to Kill Your Mother. Projekt Elektra,” was premiered in November 2017 by the Staatstheater Braunschweig. His ballet Stimmenstrahl, with choreography by Maged Mohamed, was premiered by the Bavarian Youth Ballet at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. He won two major awards in 2018: a residency stipend from the Goethe Institute Headquarters “Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto” and a “Casa Baldi” stipend from the Federal Republic of Germany, part of the residency program at the Villa Massimo (German Academy in Rome).