Христина Ангелакова

Hristina Angelakova came to singing by way of the violin, which she studied as a child in Isperih, where she was born in 1944, and afterwards in Shumen with Yanko Zehirov. Her voice took her to the conservatory in Sofia and then to Italy — the young artists' school at La Scala, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome — and won prizes: the competition for opera singers at Treviso in 1973, first place at Ostend in 1975. From 1976 she was a soloist of the Sofia National Opera, where she performed thirty-five roles across more than two decades, Carmen among them, the part she had dreamt of as a student, and Dalila, the one she said she loved best; she sang also in Berlin, Munich, Moscow, Paris, Vienna and Nice. She taught at the National Academy of Music from 1985 and was made docent there in 2000, and taught at New Bulgarian University between 2005 and 2008. She directed the Sofia National Opera from 2001 to 2004, the first woman to hold the post, and from 2012 was artistic director of the Mozart Festival at Pravets. Italy made her a Commendatore of the Republic; Bulgaria gave her the Order of Sts Cyril and Methodius. She died in 2018. Her teacher at the academy in Sofia was Sima Ivanova, and at the La Scala school she worked with Gina Cigna. Ulrica, Amneris, Azucena, Isabella in L'italiana in Algeri, Jocasta in Oedipus rex and Marfa in Khovanshchina were among the parts she sang.