The winner of the 12th Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Award has been announced. The competition took place at North Sydney’s Independent Theatre last weekend, with The Sydney International Song Prize taking place at the same event.

Thirty-year old mezzo-soprano Fleuranne Brockway received the prestigious Bel Canto Award valued at $30,000 – a prize she said she had “hoped to win one day” – for her performance of a selection of arias from Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Massenet’s Werther and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. She also received the $5,000 best Mozart Aria Prize, the $1,000 Audience Choice Award and two international study courses – a three-week term at Italy’s Solti Accademia di Bel Canto during 2023, and a one-week intensive at Austria’s Stimme, Leib & Seele.

Fleuranne Brockway, 2022 Bel Canto Award winner. Photo © Zohar Izenberg

Last year, Brockway received the Dame Heather Begg Memorial Award; a $25,000 grant for...