Cecilia Bartoli is awarded the 2012 Herbert von Karajan Music Prize

The Italian opera singer and director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, Cecilia Bartoli, has won this year's Herbert von Karajan Music Prize, which comes with a sum of €50,000.

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Cultural Foundation Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Clemens Borsig, said Bartoli was honoured for her constant quest to discover forgotten treasures of music history, and for raising awareness of classical music. The award will be presented at a gala concert at the November 30, and the prize money will be used for training young people.

The board also noted the great success of the mezzo-soprano, who has sold ten million records, won five Grammy music awards and two Classical Brit Awards. In Germany, she has received nine Echos.

The Herbert von Karajan Music Prize has been awarded since 2003 in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. The prize is funded by the Herbert von Karajan Family Foundation Helibelle. Previous recipients of the award have been Anne-Sophie Mutter (2003), Alfred Brendel (2008), Valery Gergiev (2006), Daniel Barenboim (2010), and Helmuth Rilling (2011).

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.