CHATTERERS

The Sofia Opera celebrates 100 years since the birth of Lazar Nikolov with the first performance in Bulgaria of the opera “Uncles” based on the novella of the same name by Ivan Vazov – March 2, 4 and 6, 2022

Libretto by Lazar Nikolov on the dramatization of Metodi Andonov
Contemporary‘s text by Georgi Gospodinov
The scenography of the performance uses caricatures by Boris Dimovski

Orchestra, chorus and ballet of the Sofia Opera

Apart from Sofia, the performance will be presented in Burgas – the birthplace of the composer Lazar Nikolov and in Sopot – the birthplace of Ivan Vazov.

The director Plamen Kartaloff about the first production of “Uncles” on the national opera stage:

“In CHICHOVTSI (Uncles) the composer Lazar Nikolov and the writer Ivan Vazov have a congenial joint authorial presence in the style of modernism, just as in this European trend in the arts is inherent new artistic expression and transformation of reality through new ways of creative thinking.

In both great Bulgarian masters, one of the word, the other of the music, although they lived in different epochs and in the distance of almost a century, one can see an approach ahead of their time in their work. Parody and ironic characterization in both appear as a style of expression in the aspects of the literary and musical language of CHICHOVTSI. Both the music and the lyrics, in the context of the time in which they were written, can be called an avant-garde phenomenon.

What can the style of musical drama transformed for the opera stage be? Isn't the world of the characters a mirror of meaningless chatter of absurd characters? They are frozen in reflection in their time, but also insightful into the future of events that they expect others to walk the path to and accomplish. They do not act, they always rethink in hyperbole fantasy everyday ridiculous events, have fun and try to be courageous, but they are cowards and hiding from the consequences in quarrels with the authorities. The pessimism of the characters is at the same time a pastime in the comfort of slavery, in which they live undisturbed, even happily. This leads them to the refuge of a timelessness in which they will always be eternal and existing in a perpetual motion. Perpetuum mobile chatter, perpetuum mobile quarrels and scandals. They play a game that has no end.

In the DESCENDANTS of St. L. Kostov‘s character Golemanov, we can see more clearly these grown-up CHICHOVTSI.

They have come out of their world of Vazov’s theatre of the absurd, they are still among us...”