Vera Petrova

Vera Petrova grew up in a family of musicians. Her musical training began at an early age. She studied piano, all theoretical musical disciplines and acting.

She graduated in directing and art management from the New Bulgarian University. The main role in her professional growth was played by the director Plamen Kartaloff. In 2006 she won the prestigious scholarship for creative exchange at the famous Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, and in the 2007-2008 season she worked at Covent Garden as an intern director.

Her engagements on the professional stage began from the period of study at NBU - at the National Musical Theatre "Stefan Makedonski" she was an assistant director of the productions "Die lustige Witwe" by Franz Lehár and "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" by Mozart.

Since 1996 she has been working at the Sofia Opera and Ballet. Initially, she was Plamen Kartaloff's assistant director in some of his most successful productions of this period - Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia", Verdi's "Don Carlo", Puccini's "Turandot", Ponchielli's "La Gioconda" and the large-scale outdoor production of "Prince Igor" by Borodin.

Since 2002 she has been a full-time director with attractive original interpretations for opera concerts, adapted versions of productions for prestigious visits of the theatre both in Bulgaria and abroad - Switzerland (Summer Festival, Solothurn), Japan and Romania (International Festival "Elena Teodorini", Craiova, where she presented her directorial version of "La cenerentola" by Rossini). During this period she realized her first solo performances "La serva padrona" by Pergolesi (Burgas and Sliven) and "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" by Mozart (Romania, Constanţa). They were followed by her engagements as an assistant director in international opera co-productions - "La Cleopatra" by Cimarosa and "Oedipus rex" by Stravinsky at the Mariinsky Theatre and the Graz Opera House with director Jonathan Miller and conductor Valery Gergiev, as well as "Le nozze di Figaro" of the Cyprus Opera Society and the University of Arts - Okinawa, Japan, directed by Rikiya Hirao. In Cyprus she directed Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and "Le nozze di Figaro" in the open-air at the Larnaca Castle. In 2006 she staged "Otello" by Verdi with the conductor Georgi Dimitrov at the Ancient Theatre in Plovdiv.

In the 2008-2009 season she made her first solo production on the stage of the Sofia Opera and Ballet - "Aleko" by Rachmaninoff. Together with Hristiyana Mihaleva (costume designer) and Boryana Angelova (set designer) she staged "Das Land des Lächelns" by Franz Lehár at the Music and Drama Theatre "Konstantin Kisimov", Veliko Tarnovo - a production that was also presented as a guest performance on the stage of the Musical Theatre in Sofia. At the Sofia Opera and Ballet she also staged "Aladino e la lampada magica" by Nino Rota, "La cenerentola" by Rossini and "Eugene Onegin" by Tchaikovsky, which production opened the 2017 season at the Giuseppe Verdi Opera House - Trieste.

In the period 2009-2013 she actively participated in the realization of the first production in Bulgaria of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" by Richard Wagner, staged by Acad. Plamen Kartaloff.

With the performances of the new Wagner repertoire of the Sofia Opera she travelled to the Ludwig II Festival Theatre in Füssen, to the Ljubljana Festival and to the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre - Minsk and the Bolshoi Theatre - Moscow.