Boris Christoff is without doubt one of the foremost opera singers in world history. To this day his performances – Boris in Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlos, Mephistopheles in Faust, and many others are considered unrivalled in opera art. 

Boris Christoff was born on 18 May, 1914 in Plovdiv, the Kingdom of Bulgaria and died on 28 June, 1993 in Rome, Italy, where he lived most of his life. As a child he sang in the choir of the Alexander Nevski cathedral, later – in Gusla choir where he became soloist. Despite his love of music he graduated law from Sofia University’s faculty of law. But a turning point in his life was his encounter with Bulgaria’s Tsar Boris III who, impressed by the young man’s talent, insisted that he go and study in Italy. In 1942 Boris Christoff was given a government scholarship and left for Milan.

After 1944, under the communist regime, the scholarship was cancelled, but before that, in the turbulent and uncertain war years, the money from the scholarship was barely enough for the young singer to lead a poor, at times even penniless life but he never stopped honing his musical skills. That is what we read in the letters he wrote to his family and to the woman he loved Penka Kassabova (sister of poet Geo Milev). In that period he had several recitals in Austria and made his debut on the opera stage (1946). But true success came to him in 1950 when he sang at La Fenice opera house in Venice. As his fame grew he began receiving invitations from different opera houses but that didn’t seem to interest the communist regime in Bulgaria in the least. In 1961 Boris Christoff was even denied an entry visa into the country and was unable to attend his own father’s funeral.

But in the following year things seem to have changed and the world-famous basso was able to return to the country after a 20-year absence. He attended the Gusla choir jubilee and made recordings of church music in the St. Alexander Nevski cathedral. In 1976, together with the Svetoslav Obretenov national acapella choir, and conductor Georgi Robev he recorded “Bulgarian and Russian Orthodox Chants”, again in Alexander Nevski, released and re-released as a gramophone record many times.

Alongside his enormous contribution to operatic art, Boris Christoff lives on in the memory of our compatriots with his enormous love of Bulgaria, which never waned even in the years when his relations with the communist rulers of the country were most difficult. In the 1960s he donated his home in Sofia to the state and it was later turned into the Boris Christoff Music Centre, the location of the “Boris Christoff” young opera singers international competition. His villa in Rome was turned into an academy for young opera singers - that is where he tutored talented Bulgarians almost till the end of his life. In 2014, the year of his centennial birth anniversary, the event was included in the UNESCO calendar of events.

Around the date of his birth, 18 May, concerts are organized in his memory in the town where he was born – Plovdiv, and elsewhere. This year, the 17^th Boris Christoff festival of arts opens on 18 May at the Boris Christoff Music Centre, while in the Sofia city art gallery young opera singers are organizing a programme “Golden Bulgarian voices sing for Boris Christoff”.