House of Culture Plovdiv

The Stefan Kiradjiev House of Culture was the former trade-union cultural building in Plovdiv, subsequently renamed the Boris Christoff House of Culture. The municipal council approved the new name in 2011, honouring the bass born in the city. A six-year reconstruction adapted the building for renewed cultural use, including opera, with a 530-seat auditorium. Its reopening programme brought together young Bulgarian opera singers, among them Sonya Yoncheva. The earlier Stefan Kiradjiev name belongs to the same building’s history. Houses of culture — gradski domove na kulturata, abbreviated GDK — were built across Bulgaria through the second half of the twentieth century as multi-purpose civic buildings, each with a hall large enough for an orchestra and a stage deep enough for a chorus. Plovdiv's serves opera and concert performance among much else, and Puccini has been heard in it. Built in 1946 as the trade unions' Dom na Truda, in the columned manner of the period, the building served Plovdiv for decades as the union house before the municipality took over its cultural use; the reconstruction was completed in 2013.