The final round of the Neue Stimmen Competition will be taking place in Gütersloh from October 17–22, 2005, with Gérard Mortier, director of the Opéra National de Paris, as chairman of the jury. Co-organizer of the competition is the German broadcasting company Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). First prize carries a cash award of €10,000. Preliminary rounds will begin in Yokosuka, Japan in mid-May, and will continue through September in a total of 21 locations: Berlin, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Cape Town, London, Milan, Moscow, Munich, New York, Paris, Peking, Porto, Riga, Santiago de Chile, Sofia, Stockholm, Sydney, Toronto, Vilnius and Warsaw. Brian Dickie, General Director of the Chicago Opera Theater, and conductor Gustav Kuhn, President of the Tirolean Festival Erl, will be selecting up to 50 contestants who will proceed to the final round in Gütersloh. Besides Gérard Mortier, Gustav Kuhn and Brian Dickie, members of the jury include: Kammersänger Francisco Araiza, professor at the Stuttgart College of Music and Performing Arts; Anthony Freud, general director of the Welsh National Opera and chair of the jury for the "Cardiff Singer of the World" competition; Kammersänger Siegfried Jerusalem, director of the Nuremberg-Augsburg College of Music; Jürgen Kesting, music critic and author; Bernd Loebe, general director of the Frankfurt Opera; Kammersängerin Edith Mathis, professor at the Vienna College of Music and Performing Arts as well as concert singer Edith Wiens, professor at the Nuremberg-Augsburg College of Music and at the Munich College of Music and Theatre. The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Neue Stimmen competition has earned international recognition as one of the most important events for talented young opera singers and has paved the way to international renown for numerous young artists, including Vesselina Kasarova, René Pape, Nathalie Stutzmann, Noemi Nadelmann, Roman Trekel, Hanno Müller-Brachmann, Melanie Diener, Dietrich Henschel and Angelika Kirchschlager.