The celebration of the World Tourism Day on 27 September is a suitable occasion to remind the established since many years tradition, Sofia Opera and Ballet to be a site of exceptional interest on behalf of the numerous Bulgarian and foreign tourists, who visit Sofia all seasons of the year.
For the purpose, our first opera theatre established enduring contacts and agreements with almost all travel agencies and government institutions, which have relation to the domestic and foreign tourism, as well as with the Bulgarian Association of Travel Agents. Advertising and information materials with the current programme of the Opera are monthly distributed at the receptions and the advertisement points in prestigious hotels in the Capital. At press conferences before the opera and ballet premieres are always present representatives of the tourist branch, who get regularly informed about the accents in the programme repertoire, as well as they are given the possibility to talk on the spot with the participants in these spectacles – conductors, soloists, distinguished foreign performers, as well as with the management of Sofia Opera and Ballet.
Unprecedented success so far had the 7 editions of the Wagner Festival, at which were presented Wagner’s masterpieces from the tetralogy “Der Ring des Nibelungen” – “Das Rheingold”, “Die Walküre”, “Siegfried”, “Götterdämmerung”, as well as of the operas “Tristan und Isolde” and “Parsifal”.
These amazing spectacles by the stage director Plamen Kartaloff were visited by representatives of the Wagner societies from all over the world, who marked with great excitement that not a single one of the world-known opera theatres dared to present so far Wagner’s music universe for an entire decade. It was pointed out that these spectacles, in which take part only Bulgarian soloists and performers, surpassed all expectations of the connoisseurs of Wagner’s work and this high esteem attracted during the past years many more friends of operatic art from all countries and of all ages.
Into a beneficial tradition turned the weekly visit of the Sofia Opera of hundreds of spectators from Serbia, Macedonia and Greece. Thanks to the travel agencies and to individual visits, the Opera attracts more and more visitors from Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Spain, Germany, Romania, Italy, France.
With great interest the Bulgarian and the foreign audience was actively following the attractive summer programmes of the Sofia Opera on the open stages in Belogradchik, the Park of the G.S. Rakovski Academy of Defence, Lake Pancharevo, Roman Forum at the Boyana Cinema Center and the stage behind the fortress walls of Tsari Mali Grad. Under the imposed restrictive conditions in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, the given spectacles in the open air gave possibility to the Bulgarian and the foreign spectators to watch their most loved opera and ballet titles in a unique, authentic atmosphere. In these performances was shown great interest!
The Austrian music critic Klaus Billand was present at several spectacles at the three new summer festivals of the Sofia Opera from Summer season 2020 – “Muses of Water” – Lake Pancharevo, “Roman Square” – Boyana Cinema Center and “Portal of the Two Worlds” at the late antique Tsari Mali Grad Fortress, and he published several reviews about the summer programme of the Sofia Opera and Ballet at onlinemerker.com and opera-online.com.
On the World Tourism Day 27 September 2020, the doors of the Sofia Opera are open for the connoisseurs of operatic art, when will take place the long-awaited concert of the XX Master class of the Bulgarian opera prima Raina Kabaivanska. This is a beneficial chance for our grateful audience to celebrate this feast through the conquering talents, who will appear on Sofia stage.
