Acad. Plamen Kartaloff is still banging his head against a brick wall for the creation of a museum in the building.
This season the audience of the Sofia Opera and Ballet will have the possibility to watch spectacles only from first, second and third balcony. The ground floor of the spectator’s hall is already transformed into an enormous orchestra box, where at a reasonable distance from each other will play the musicians from the orchestra, invisible from the seats for spectators.
The changes are in connection with the requirements of the extraordinary epidemic situation of social distance, in the name of the security of the artists, since for some works a big orchestra is required – even of 80 persons. This explained the Director of the Opera Acad. Plamen Kartaloff before the journalists, who yesterday took a look at the changed arrangement in the temple of music. The spectators are also taken in consideration: they will fill up to 30% of the seats, in an interval of one chair, at that on the empty chairs between them will be placed a flower or a whole bouquet. This means a maximum of
320-350 persons per performance
clarified Kartaloff.
The turning of the hall into a place for the orchestra during the time of the pandemic is a concept also of other big opera theatres around the world. “The London Covent Garden left us behind in this respect”, commented the maestro with a wink.
The new 130th season will be opened on 9 October with the opera “Yana’s Nine Brothers”. Envisaged are two premiere titles too: the opera “Elektra” by Richard Strauss, which will be produced for the first time in Bulgaria (26 November), and the ballet “1001 Nights” to the music of Fikret Amirov (27 March 2021). In the repertoire will come back two favourite works: Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” and the musical “Les Misérables” by Schönberg. During the season there will be many debuts of young artists, only in the ballet “Don Quixote” they will be 5. The opera will produce its new stars like the bass-baritone Biser Georgiev for example, revealed the Director.
During the extraordinary situation, 30 productions of the Opera were streamed online and over the airwaves of BNT2, and after the removing of the bans, in the summer, were performed 66 spectacles, which gathered over 17 000 spectators on 8 stages: The Park of the Academy of Defence, Lake Pancharevo, Roman Square at New Boyana, Sofia Airport, the Belogradchik Rocks, Tsari Mali Grad ... “We were constructing stages, we hired facilities entirely with our own incomes, with not a single lev state subsidy”, said Kartaloff.
With pain
he admitted one failure of his
– he didn’t manage to realize his dream of many years for creation of a Museum of the Bulgarian Opera Theatre in the left part of the building at 1, Vrabcha Str. Party “Ataka” has vacated the rooms there, but there stay the Commission for Consumer Protection, the Commission of Military History and other offices. Kartaloff said that he has addressed all kinds of instances for their relocation, but so far there was no reaction. The exhibits are in cardboard boxes, just the archive of Boris Christoff weighs 29 tons, and still many artists would like to donate their spiritual heritage. There should be social pressure and political will for resolving the problem, since all respected opera theatres in the world have such museums, commented music artists and music lovers.
https://www.monitor.bg/
