N.Y. SOPRANO WINS SECOND PRIZE IN TCHAIKOVSKY COMPETITION

Soprano Barbara Kilduff, a 27-year-old New Yorker, Tuesday won second prize and a silver medal in the singing competition at the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

“The audience went crazy for me,” Kilduff said. “The audience is the best barometer of what an artist is to them (the Soviets). They’ve been overwhelmingly nice, friendly.”

The soprano from Huntington, N.Y., sang arias from “Le Coq d’Or” by Rimsky-Korsakov and “Hamlet” by Ambroise Thomas.

She shared the second prize with Romanian mezzo-soprano Ana-Felicia Filip. Each was given a silver medal. They split $2,800 in prize money.

First prize went to Soviet mezzo-soprano Natalia Yerasova, 31, a member of the opera company in Perm in the Urals.

In the men’s competition, the top prize was split between Soviet baritone Grigory Gritsiuk and his compatriot, Alexander Morozov, a basso. Second place went to Soviet basso Barseg Tumanyan.

Kilduff said she would not have predicted her success when the competition began two weeks ago. She was one of 69 competitors

The soprano is a 1984 master’s degree graduate from the Yale School of Music, where her teacher was Doris Yarick-Cross.

Kilduff said she plans to enter another international contest in Munich in September.