The baritone Veselin Mihaylov will make his debut in the role of Giorgio Germont in the great operatic drama “La traviata” by Verdi on 18 February. The spectacle is at 19 h at the Sofia Opera and Ballet.
Veselin Mihaylov was born in Burgas. He is graduate in Classical singing at the National Academy of Music, of Master Programme under the guidance of Prof. Maria Belcheva. He was scholarship student of “Gallery of Bulgarian Talents”, the Boris Christoff Foundation and the Raina Kabaivanska Foundation. He graduated from a course at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome and took part in a master class of Raina Kabaivanska in Modena. His repertoire includes the roles of Escamillo in “Carmen” and Zurga in “Les pêcheurs de perles” by Bizet; Abimélech in “Samson et Dalilah” by Saint-Saëns; Paris in “Roméo et Juliette” by Gounod; Marcello in “La bohème” and Marco in “Gianni Schicchi” by Puccini; Onegin in “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky; Shchelkalov in “Boris Godunov” by Mussorgsky and others.

He has taken part in spectacles at the Sofia Opera and Ballet, in Bulgaria Hall, at the Bulgarian Cultural Centres in Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and Prague.

The story about the impossible love of the courtesan Violetta Valéry scandalized Verdi’s contemporaries. The music critics define “La traviata” as Verdi’s most audacious opera. Not by chance at that time the censorship imposed the action to be shifted one century backwards, so that the good morals could be protected. In fact, the composer exposes the prejudices of the society, in which he himself was living.

The courtesan Violetta Valéry falls in love with the young aristocrat Alfredo Germont. Alfredo’s father – Giorgio makes the mistake to judge her not according to her human nature, but according to her profession. She breaks with Alfredo and she does it not only for his good, but also because of the reputation of his family.

The premiere of “La traviata” was on 6 March 1853 at Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice. In Bulgaria the opera was staged for the first time by the Opera Society in 1910. Conductor of the first production was T. Hadjiev and stage director was K. Mihaylov – Stoyan.

Stage director of the contemporary production is Plamen Kartaloff

Set and costume design Ivan Savov 

Conductor Evan-Alexis Christ

Participants:

Stanislava Momekova, Tsveta Sarambelieva, Ivanka Ninova, Emil Pavlov, Veselin Mihaylov /for the first time in the role of Giorgio Germont/, Hrisimir Damyanov, Dimitar Stanchev, Nikolay Voynov, Angel Hristov, Slavi Manov, Georgi Dukov