site.btaDecember 15, 1934: Birth of Opera Diva Raina Kabaivanska

World famous Bulgarian opera singer Raina Kabaivanska celebrates her 91st birthday on Monday.

Following is a digest of English-language items by which BTA's External Service has covered her illustrious personality and career over the last 30 years:

It Also Takes Brains to Sing, Raina Kabaivanska Says

Sofia, May 8, 1997 (BTA) - The singer has admitted in interviews she is not afraid to see her career coming to an end. "I know the theatre is an illusion but it is exactly what gives me strength," she says. Her successful career makes her happy and that is why she does not fear the day she will step down from the stage. "I have always said that you don't just need a voice to sing: it also takes brains. That is why I am sure I will work to my last day. I will have projects to work on," she says. Asked whether her career has taken away something of her private life, she says she believes a woman that has made a good career has a more stable family.

Raina Kabaivanska Celebrates 40-year Career

Sofia, March 16, 1998 (Penka Momchilova of BTA) - Critics have named Kabaivanska "the most charming Tosca of the century". She has performed this role nearly 400 times along with Madam Butterfly which is another favourite.

The opera prima has given a new life to a host of other Verdi characters including Elizabeth in Don Carlos and Dezdemona in Othello. Her repertoire includes Italian, German, French and Russian classics, such as Margerita in Faust, Manon in Manon Lescaut and Lisa in The Queen of Spades, to mention only some of them.

Kabaivanska started her career at the age of 25 in the choir of the Sofia Opera and the ensemble of the Construction Troops. In 1961 she made her debut in the La Scala in Milan in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda. A year later she sang in London's Covent Garden in Othello together with Mario Del Monaco and Tito Gobbi.

In the 1960s the Bulgarian soprano made a breakthrough in the United States. For ten seasons in a row she had contracts with the New York Metropolitan Opera House. During this period she returned frequently to the La Scala, singing in Mephistopheles, Don Carlos and Hernani. It was then that her repertoire started to take shape: Neda of Pagliacci, Mimi of La Boheme, Alice of Falstaff. She was already engulfed by the Puccini's world where she made her greatest artistic achievements: Butterfly and Tosca.

In 1991 Kabaivanska became the first opera singer to receive the Women of Rome Award which is given to women with contribution to politics, industry, science and art. Her award was entitled "A Life on Stage". Other winners of this award are Sofia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Giulietta Masina.

Kabaivanska is also winner of the Via Condotti award conferred by Rome to nonresidents who love this city and are loved by its people. The award has also been conferred to the Pope, Leonard Bernstein and Mstislav Rostropovich.

Kabaivanska says she has never distinguished between stages: small or big, she always sings for the audience because it is all that matters for her.

She believes that art saves people and helps them see beyond the ugliness of the material. Art is the critical conscience of the world and the artist should have the courage to fight for their ideals.

Raina Kabaivanska: First Bulgarian Opera Singer to Be Awarded Italy's Most Prestigious Musical Prize

Sofia, October 19, 2000 (BTA) - Famed Bulgarian opera singer Raina Kabaivanska is to receive Venice's "A Life Devoted to Music" prize on November 21.

"I feel very honoured to be the first Bulgarian recipient of Italy's most prestigious prize for classical music," Kabaivanska told a news conference Thursday. She also said she is glad to receive the prize with director Luca Ronconi since the two have staged five shows together.

Musicians such as Arthur Rubinstein, Carl Byom, Yehudi Mehuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich and Leonard Burnstein are among the recipients of the prize.

"We, the theatre people, live in a different world, a world of illusions which gives us the strength to go on. In this world, one forgets everything because of music," she said.

In her view, opera and art in general have a future. Despite technological development, computers and e-mails, people are people because they crave beauty. And beauty is to be found in art, she said.

For "Heroine of Melodrama," 70th Birthday Is "Just an Ordinary Workday"

Sofia, December 14, 2004 (BTA) - During a 45-year brilliant career, she has sung the most famous soprano parts at the most famous theatres worldwide: Paris, Venice, Naples, Rome, Madrid, Moscow, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York (a 15-season contract at the Met), Salzburg, Munich, Hamburg, Budapest, and Buenos Aires.

Her extensive repertoire includes incomparable appearances in Puccini's Madama Butterfly (it has earned her recognition as "The Heroine of Melodrama"), Manon Lescaut and Tosca, Verdi's Don Carlo, Otello, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, La Forza del destino, I Vespri Siciliani, Ernani and Messa da Requiem, Wagner's Rienzi, Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, Donizetti's Roberto Devereux and Fausta, Massenet's Manon, Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, Gounod's Faust, Richard Strauss's Capriccio, Gluck's Amide, as well as works by Bellini, Lehar, Britten, Zandonai, Tosti, Poulenc, Weil, and Janacek.

Kabaivanska was born in Bourgas (on the Black Sea) on December 15, 1934. Having graduated in opera singing and piano at Sofia's State Academy of Music, she specialized in Milan under Zita Fumagalli in 1958. She debuted at La Scala in 1961 as Agnese in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda and at Covent Garden as Desdemona in Otello in 1962. She has done Tosca over 400 times since 1971 in Modena. Her "yet another" farewell rendition of the role came in Naples and Madrid earlier this year. She is the only singer to have performed Tosca in Sarah Bernhardt's costume.

Kabaivanska's schedule of appearances is booked for several years ahead. In 2006 she will perform another first, Herodia in Richard Strauss's Salome in Venice in the original version, written in French by Oscar Wilde.

Raina Kabaivanska is a professor at the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, Italy, and a jury member of many prestigious competitions, including Maria Callas and Queen Elisabeth. She conducts master classes for singers in Spain, Italy, France and, since 2001, at Sofia's New Bulgarian University, where she is an Honorary Doctor (1998) and Professor Emeritus. In 2002 she established a Raina Kabaivanska Foundation, which has so far awarded eleven scholarships to young opera singers from Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, China and Argentina.

In 2004, she started teaching a world-class two-year course in singing at Modena's Orazio Vecchi Music Conservatory together with Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni and conductor Leone Magiera.

"I don't want a monument during my lifetime," Kabaivanska said, asked whether she is planning to write a book about herself. "I will neither write a book about myself, nor will let anybody else do so," she added.

Nevertheless, she has a long list of art honours, including the Premio Bellini (1965), the Viotti d'oro (1970), the Premio Puccini (1978), the Premio Illica (1979), the Premio Monteverdi (1980), the Premio Lorenzo il Magnifico from the Medici Accademy for the Arts in Florence (1990), the Italian critics' Premio Abbiati (1995), the Premio Internazionale dell'Operetta (1999), and A Life Dedicated to Music Grand Prix (Venice, 2000). Her state distinctions include an Order of the Balkan Range, First Class, and an Order of Civil Merit of the Italian Republic. She has been named Italy's Most Popular Person on five occasions and Musician of the Year twice.

Kabaivanska lives in Modena, Italy, together with her husband Franco Guandalini, an opera producer, art collector and pharmacist, and their daughter Francesca, a doctor of archaeology. PM/LG

Raina Kabaivanska, the Bulgarian Recognized as "the Most Italian of Singers," Turns 90

Sofia, December 15, 2024 (BTA) - One of Bulgaria's cultural icons, opera diva Raina Kabaivanska, turned 90 on December 15. A household name in her country for decades, the soprano boasts a uniquely successful international career spanning more than 55 years. She has maintained intense cooperation with La Scala in Milan since 1961. By the mid-1970s, she was an international star. She won a loyal audience in Italy, the nation which gave the world the art of opera, thanks to her talent, repertoire and physical beauty.

On Wikipedia, Kabaivanska is introduced as "one of the leading lirico-spinto sopranos of her generation, particularly associated with Verdi and Puccini, although she sang a wide range of roles."

"There is something very Balkan about the way Raina Kabaivanska talks about herself," but "otherwise, she is the most Italian of singers," La Scala says on its website. Europe's preeminent opera house runs the transcript of a birthday interview with the singer, headlined "A Life with a Crown." It says: "Raina Kabaivanska, who turns 90 on December 15, looks back on her extraordinary career, from military choirs in Bulgaria to Beatrice di Tenda at La Scala with Joan Sutherland, always with the intelligence and irony for which her audiences know her."

It was no surprise that Kabaivanska was among the stars at the opening of La Scala's new season earlier this month.

The Bulgarian government wrote on its Facebook page on Sunday: "With profound respect, we extend our greetings and good wishes to the great Bulgarian opera singer Raina Kabaivanska on her jubilee. Her extraordinary contribution to the art of opera is unquestionable. With her imposing presence, unmatched stage prowess and unique voice, Kabaivanska conquered the world's top opera venues and won the hearts of loyal admirers. In her teaching career, Raina Kabaivanska has imparted in young talents a love of music for life."