Greek-Cypriot Australian soprano and actress Christiana Aloneftis has received the 2024 Brian Boak Outstanding Performer Bursary.
She has been awarded $20,000, which she will use to further develop her career in both opera and acting.
“To receive this award is a huge honour for me,” she told Limelight magazine.
“Now, as a full-time performing artist pursuing two exceptionally demanding art forms and their challenging industries – film and opera – I feel equipped to manage what comes up ahead.
“It is a very exciting time for me, a time of endless possibility but also a time of preparedness and a time of intention and creation.”
The bursary will allow Aloneftis, who is based in Munich, Germany, to undertake a mentorship with Italian soprano and Puccini expert Donata D’Annunzio Lombardi in Rome.
She will also attend acting courses at Los Angeles and London based schools.
The award-winning soprano is fluent in five languages and has performed with the Cyprus Philharmonic Orchestra, Connecticut Lyric Opera and North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Her previous awards include the 2016 Mike Walsh Fellowship Award and the 2015 Cyprus Vocal Scholarship Competition.
She has also been a semi-finalist in the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Award and a finalist in the 2017 Australian Opera Awards.
She performed the role of Tsarevna in the Australian premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Kashchey the Immortal at Melbourne Recital Centre in 2018.
