Plamen Kartaloff resurrected the memory of the great composer and pianist
A hall named after the distinguished composer, pianist, lawyer, philosopher and pedagogue Trifon Silyanovsky was opened at the Sofia Opera and Ballet. The idea of honouring the former accompanist of the Sofia Opera on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth was the director Acad. Plamen Kartaloff, who worked with Silyanovsky for many years. The composer had an uneasy fate during communism, on the denunciation of a colleague in 1949 he was arrested and sent to camps for a remark against Stalin.
He was later rehabilitated and allowed to work at the Sofia Opera. Even as a young director, full of ideas, Plamen Kartaloff gave him a hand and invited him to create the Blagoevgrad Chamber Opera together in the mid-1970s.
Now 50 years later, Acad. Kartaloff, as a man and an artist who believes that a nation without memory has no future and who insists on traditions and the connection between generations, initiated the naming of a room after Trifon Silyanovski. The modest but erudite pianist worked in a small room on the sixth floor of the Sofia Opera.
Plamen Kartaloff talked about his collaboration with Trifon Silyanovsky and pointed out the unjust repression of the composer in the years before 1989.
In the summer of 1972, a group of students from the Bulgarian State Conservatory founded the Youth Opera at the Pencho Slaveykov Community Centre in Sofia. It was the idea of its founder Plamen Kartaloff – Director, chief artistic director and director (1972-1982).
The ambition of the young man, devoted to art, is to take opera to places where it has never been. "Then we were together with the great Bulgarian musician Trifon Silyanovsky, who left the Sofia Opera and came with us to create this youth chamber opera," said Acad. Plamen Kartaloff.
Before that, the great tenor Dimitar Uzunov, who led the Sofia Opera from 1972 to 1974, invited Plamen Kartaloff to join his team. "I answered him that I wanted to go on my long way, to make it on my own, without being here on staff," the famous director was frank.
The composer Dimitar Petkov, who became head of the Sofia Opera in 1975 and was also Director of the Union of Composers, says that Sofia cannot have two operas. However, the idea of Plamen Kartaloff's musical company is not to compete with the National Opera, but to develop opera art all over Bulgaria. In the end, the Youth Chamber Opera moved to Blagoevgrad and the Pirin town became the centre of chamber opera productions.
"I can never forget those first steps because I was creating myself as an organizer, as a director. We wore sets and ironed costumes," the Director of Sofia Opera recalls today. He was the man who appreciated Trifon Silyanovsky's talent and erudition and went to him in his room at the Sofia Opera and invited him to become Music director of the chamber opera.
"Foncho left the Sofia Opera from that room. These days he turns 100. What better occasion for us to illuminate this room of the accompanist, the musician, the encyclopaedist, the composer, the pianist, and to give our young artists the opportunity to be inspired by what he has left in these walls, in this spirit," Maestro Kartaloff said with excitement.
The room of the composer and pianist Trifon Silyanovsky, where he worked as a accompanist at the Sofia Opera
The room was consecrated by Father Kiryl Popov – clergyman, composer and conductor, author of choral church works, secular and spiritual choral songs, as well as the musical poem "The Hermit of Rila". The philosophical spectacle was staged by Acad. Plamen Kartaloff this year and was dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate.
Father Kiril Popov blessed the Director of the Sofia Opera, the company, and all those present at the ceremony and prayed to God to give strength to people devoted to art. The priest and conductor highlighted the role of Maestro Kartaloff in preserving the Bulgarian spirit and memory.
The dedication ceremony of the Trifon Silyanovsky Hall ended with "Long Live", sung by Father Kiril and led by the soloists of the Sofia Opera and the guests of the event.
Afterwards, soloists of the National Opera performed a short concert with works by Trifon Silyanovsky. He is the author of symphonies, concertos for string orchestra, piano concerto and other works for orchestra, choral opuses, chamber and solo pieces. Many of his works are thematically related to the orthodox musical tradition and critics consider him a follower of the great German composers.
https://lupa.bg/news/sofiyskata-opera-posveti-zala-na-erudita-trifon-silyanovski_270397news.html