Mexico District Laffont Competition

The Metropolitan Opera National Council (MONC) invited Mexico to become its 41st audition district in 2017. (The Competition was re-named the Laffont Competition in 2021, in honor of the transformative gift of that family to the Metropolitan Opera,)

The Mexico District of the Competition is sponsored by the San Miguel MetOpera Trust.
The first Competition in Mexico took place in San Miguel de Allende on November 8, 2018.
The Mexico District proudly celebrated its fifth anniversary on March 19, 2023.
156 young Mexican singers have been heard by judges certified by the Metropolitan Opera.
27 singers have been named winners & moved on to a regional round in the United States, most often their first international competition.
10 singers have received prize awards in regional rounds in the USA.
2 singers have reached the semi-final round of the competition & have sung on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House.
In March, 2020, soprano Denis Velez became the first Mexican singer named a Grand National Finals Winner of the Competition on the MetOpera stage, with a prize award of $20,000USD.
Soprano Yunuet Laguna, 2018 winner, made her solo debut on the stage of the MetOpera in March, 2022.
5 singers have had the experience of being long-term young artists in residence with major opera companies in the United States.
San Miguel MetOpera Trust and its generous expat community sponsors have raised more than $200,000USD in support of the Competition.

The Mexico District of the MetOpera Laffont Competition offers its Competition Winners two benefits offered by no other Competition district:

A three to four-day intensive coaching and support program, the Rocky Mountain Prelude, to take them to their peak performance level in order to prepare them to compete at their very best in the next round of the Competition in the United States, and
A Winners’ Concert appearance for sponsors and friends of the Competition in San Miguel de Allende, which challenges them to learn new material quickly, requires them to work as an ensemble, to learn the craft of staging, and to work with an intensely creative production team that will take them as artists to new levels they will be proud to have been a part of.

NOTE: The list of Advisory Committee members follows here. It is followed by the listing of winners and judges for each year, beginning with 2022 Winners and 2022 Judges.