Sofia Opera to open new season with world-class conductor, prominent soloists in Puccini's Tosca

The Bulgarian National Opera will open its new season with Giacomo Puccini's beloved Tosca. The production by theatre director Plamen Kartaloff has been running for 14 years and has toured Japan and Turkey.

The two performances on September 26 and 28 will be conducted by renowned conductor Daniel Oren, a respected international opera specialist and sought-after guest at the most prestigious theaters and festivals in Europe, North America, and Israel. Singers with international careers have been invited to perform the three leading roles.

The magnificent Maria Jose Siri from Uruguay will sing Tosca in Sofia after several triumphant performances in Nabucco and Aida at the Arena di Verona.

Romanian opera singer Stefan Pop, one of the world's leading lyric tenors, is already known to audiences in Sofia from his participation in Verdi's Requiem last autumn. In recent months, he has sung in renowned theatres in Paris and London, Munich and Berlin, Helsinki and Trieste.

Claudio Sgura from Italy is one of the foremost contemporary Verdi baritones, but the role of Scarpia is among the most important in his repertoire. He has performed it on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera - New York, the Vienna State Opera, theaters in Sydney, Turin, Oslo, Genoa, Rome, as well as the Arena di Verona.

At a press conference dedicated to the opening of the new season at the Sofia Opera, conductor Daniel Oren said he was very happy to return to Sofia again after his wonderful experience here with Verdi's Requiem, Puccini's Turandot, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the open-air stage in front of St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral downtown Sofia.

The opera Tosca was the first work he conducted at the Rome Opera at the age of 22, and it is very important to him. Oren considers the main heroine to be one of the first feminists in opera literature. According to the conductor, "in most of the well-known titles, the heroines always remain passive; in operas, men decide what will happen to women. Tosca is completely different and wonderful! A woman who fights, follows what she believes in, and goes all the way. A woman who is ready to pay the high price for true love..." We eagerly await to see Maria Jose Siri in this iconic role – a renowned interpreter of Verdi and Puccini's most famous heroines, “capable of complete dedication” and with “brilliant high notes” according to international critics.

In a special interview for Radio Bulgaria, the director of the Sofia Opera Plamen Kartaloff shares:

"My desire is for our repertoire plan for this year to have a very broad international presence, and this gave me reason to continue working with Maestro Daniel Oren and, together with him, to select those soloists who are constantly on the world's biggest stages. So we started with Verdi's Requiem two months ago, followed by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and now this series under his musical direction continues with Tosca, Rigoletto, and a concert by soprano Asmik Grigorian. We owe this to our long collaboration with Daniel Oren. We often work in Italy - in productions that I do together with him. A truly wonderful collaboration...

Opera fans are especially excited about the gala concert of the dazzling international star Asmik Grigorian, which will be conducted by Daniel Oren on November 14.

In mid-October, audiences will have the opportunity to see productions of the operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci – a collaboration of the Sofia Opera with the Pavarotti-Freni Theatre in Modena, as well as with the opera companies in Piacenza and Rimini. At the end of February, the opera house in Sofia will raise the curtain on a new production of Macbeth, one of Verdi's lesser-known operas.

A series of successful productions from recent years will be performed again during the new season:

“We have a huge repertoire and often cannot show everything,” says Plamen Kartaloff. "Our artists are not under contract, as is the situation with artists abroad. Here, they are on a labour contract and we are obliged to ensure their development with roles that enrich them vocally and stage-wise, giving them the chance to go through a repertoire that is interesting and useful for them. My approach has always been to discover new voices, and it is thanks to Richard Wagner that these singers have broadened their horizons.

The Sofia Opera next Wagner festival will be dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Bayreuth Festival. We have nine productions, but we will only perform six, the other three will be broadcast online. I would like to share that the Sofia Opera was noticed on the world festival market with Richard Wagner. Just as we look for unusual places and spaces for outdoor opera performances, so a “more unusual” repertoire than traditional compositional thinking fits into the balance that makes up the Sofia Opera".

The Sofia Opera impresses the German audience with its production of Wagner's Valkyrie

Plamen Kartaloff never complains about the funding provided by the Ministry of Culture on the basis of a delegated budget that depends on revenue: “We do everything we can to cope.” His wish for the new season is: “May all artists be healthy, may we have an audience, and may we, together with spectators, artists, and repertoire development directions, create a truly national theater of international significance.”

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Sofia Opera to open new season with world-class conductor, prominent soloists in Puccini's Tosca

Renowned conductor Daniel Oren will lead the orchestra in the opening nights on September 26 and 28

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