Melba Opera Trust has announced soprano Eden Shifroni as the recipient of the 2025 Alastair Jackson International Opera Award, the most valuable opera Award in Australia.

Valued at $180,000, the award funds two years of tuition and living expenses to support Shifroni to study at the Royal College of Music (RCM) Opera Studio in London.

“Moving across the world alone is daunting, but it’s a necessary leap for an Australian singer aspiring to make it on the international stage,” says Shifroni, who heads to London in September 2025.

Hailing from Sydney, Shifroni is quickly establishing herself as one of Australia’s leading young sopranos. In 2024 she was awarded the Marianne Mathy Scholarship at the IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition and the JSRB Foundation Award at the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Award Finals. In 2023, Shifroni sang the title role in a new production of The Coronation of Poppea staged at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).

Eden Shifroni. Photo © Jolanta Morgan

While personal fundraising or taking on part-time work is often required to subsidise partial tuition...