Awe, wild applause and “Bravo!” shouts filled the hall of the “Kemal Ataturk” cultural center after the finale of the opera “Elektra” by Richard Strauss which the Sofia Opera was invited to perform at the Istanbul opera and ballet festival on the 29th of May, the Sofia Opera informed.
Conductor Evan-Alexis Christ, director Plamen Kartaloff and lead singers Liliya Kehayova (Elektra), Tsvetana Bandalovska (Hrisotemis), Gergana Rusekova (Clytemnestra), Atanas Mladenov (Orest), Daniel Ostretsov (Egist) as well as Petar Buchkov, Stanislava Momekova, Diana Vasileva, Rosen Nenchev, Stefan Vladimirov, Silvana Pravcheva, Vesela Yaneva, Violeta Radomirska, Alexandrina Stoyanova-Andreeva, Ina Petrova, Maria Pavlova as well as the Sofia Opera orchestra were called back to the stage multiple times for an encore.
“This new invitation for the Istanbul opera and ballet festival shows that music is the fastest and easiest way for people to come closer no matter where they are”, Plamen Kartaloff, director of the Sofia Opera and Ballet, said.
Present at the performance were N. Pr. Angel Cholakov, Bulgarian ambassador in Ankara, Tan Sağtürk, artistic director of the Turkish national opera and ballet and Dzhaner Akgun, artistic director of the Istanbul national opera and ballet.
After the Sofia Opera’s triumphant tours in Salerno, Italy, with “Die Walküre” by Richard Wagner, “Elektra” by Richard Strauss in Bydgoszcz, Poland and in Istanbul, Turkey and “Zorba the Greek” by Mikis Theodorakis in Crete, the Sofia Opera and Ballet team continues preparations for the summer festival performance which will begin on the 13th of June and will go on until the 17th of August on four different stages: “Opera in the Park”, performances for the Sofia Opera’s youngest viewers at the Military academy park; the Wagner festival at the Sofia Opera hall; “Muses on the Water” at Pancharevo Lake (ballet and musical performances) and the grand finale, “Opera at the Square” in front of the “Saint Alexander Nevsky” Cathedral.
“Our open stage performances carry different messages and tell the story of the pieces’ protagonists and events in a new, different way thus turning said pieces into a different kind of art. It’s like live cinema… every stage performance presented on an open stage sounds new and unique. The audience seeing these performances is so different and unburdened by pretense as well as by the mandatory requirement for official evening attire”, Plamen Kartaloff commented.