Such a feast was the opening of the season of the Sofia Opera and Ballet on 9 October with the most Bulgarian opera “Yana’s Nine Brothers” by Lyubomir Pipkov in season 2020/2021, when we celebrate 130 years of the constitution of the Sofia Opera. The wild applauses by the audience, which as if didn’t want not to part from the experienced, the high emotional degree from the stage, means a need of such spiritual feasts.

In his emotional speech for the opening of the new season, Acad. Plamen Kartaloff opened pages from the history of our first opera theatre, he reminded of the significance of Lyubomir Pipkov’s work of art in the Bulgarian opera theatre and its presentation at the world international forum Opera Europa, as well as on the stage of Bolshoi Theatre. The production was estimated by the critique with the power of a Sheakespeare’s dramaturgical and stage scope.

Prophetical are the messages of this historical music drama to our contemporaneity, a time of incertitude and anxiety, when exactly today we have necessity of unification against the difficult trials and of strength of the spirit.

This event was one of the possibly best prescriptions during a pandemic for ascent above the fears. In the temple of the opera the audience, conquered by the magic of the spectacle, for a long time didn’t want to part from the emotion and its exaltation of everything created by Bulgaria’s national opera theatre with world recognition.

Admirations for the done, for seeing as transformed the spectator’s hall specially because of all measures for the orchestra to be situated in the safest and most secure way.
In the space of the ground floor it sounded like an organ under the hall’s cupola. And the artists, also at a distance, obligatory in the mise-en-scene of the stage, created a new sensation in the experience of the audience, which was installed on the three balconies. It was at interval of one chair, on which there were placed flowers. An atmosphere of beauty and pleasure.

It can be said that this gives a new, different life to the opera enjoyment. I would add that from a musical point of view the new space for the artists on the stage and the orchestra in the hall holds very well the sound as a whole, which comes homogeneously to each spectator.
The whole artistic team, chorus, ballet and exceptional orchestra under the baton of Zhorzh Dimitrov – everybody as an integral organism emanated a magical energy.
Fantastic were the soloists Lilia Kehayova, Svetozar Rangelov. Gergana Rusekova, Hrisimir Damyanov, Rumyana Petrova, Biser Georgiev, Krasimir Dinev and all the rest, who created a new life for “Yana’s Nine Brothers” by Lyubomir Pipkov, a Bulgarian composer of genius.

Dr. Magdalena Manolova