"It is a pride and a joy for me to present our Bulgarian Wagner on the stage of the Macedonian Opera and Ballet" – said to "Ploshtad Slaveikov" Acad. Kartaloff, director of "Die Walküre". – The honour to hear Wagner here for the first time has fallen not to a German but to a Bulgarian theatre. We presented our Wagner to the German, Russian, Belarusian and Slovenian audience."
"Our spectacle presents a fantasy based entirely on Wagner's music," said Acad. Plamen Kartaloff. Photo: Ploshtad Slaveykov
Prior to the Sofia Opera and Ballet production, Plamen Kartaloff had already staged three titles at the Macedonian Opera – Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor", Verdi's "Don Carlo" and Macedonian composer Riste Avramovski's "Lidia of Macedonia". His reading of "Lidia..." opened the May Opera Nights last year in Skopje.
More than 130 artists travelled from Bulgaria for the tour in the Macedonian capital. Acad. Kartaloff announced that the Sofia Opera is arriving with its best soloists, orchestra, a small ballet ensemble and all the technical staff needed to bring Scandinavian mythology to life on stage in Northern Macedonia. The main roles will be performed by Thomas Hall (Wotan), Mariana Zvetkova (Fricka), Martin Iliev (Siegmund), Angel Hristov (Hunding), Gergana Rusekova (Brünnhilde) and Tsvetana Bandalovska (Sieglinde).
The meeting with the Macedonian media today was also attended by conductor Evan-Alexis Christ, an American who has worked with the Sofia Opera for three years and described the Bulgarian operatic voices as outstanding. The stage design of "Die Walküre" is by Hans Kudlich and the costumes are by Hristiana Mihaleva-Zorbalieva.
The Macedonian Opera and Ballet. Photo: Ploshtad Slaveikov
Macedonian publications highlighted the historic first performance of Wagner on their stage. Their journalists asked Acad. Kartaloff about his approach to "Die Walküre" and why he is staging it for the second time. The director explained that 10 years after his first reading of "Die Walküre", he did a second one, mostly because of a repeat invitation to perform the work in Füssen, Germany. This gave him the opportunity to make a new "Der Ring des Nibelungen". It is this second reading of "Die Walküre" that the audience in Skopje will see and hear.
Through the media, Plamen Kartaloff invited the Macedonian audience to come to Sofia to see his latest work based on Wagner's music – "Lohengrin", which will have its premiere on 13 June.
The artists of the Sofia Opera and Ballet have been presenting Wagner's tetralogy beyond our country's borders for 12 years – in 2012 with "Siegfried" at the Birthday Forum in Minsk, Belarus; in 2015 with "Siegfried" at the National Opera and Ballet Festival in Minsk, Belarus; in 2015, with "Tristan und Isolde" at the Ljubljana Festival in Slovenia; the same year in Germany, in Füssen and the four operas – "Das Rheingold", "Die Walküre", "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung"; in 2018 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
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