Alexander Tekeliev Jr.

Opera singing first, then stage direction: Tekeliev took master's degrees in both at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music, in 1998 and 2000. Born in Sofia in 1972, he had come to them by way of the piano, begun at five, and the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School, where he read piano and classical singing. He was assistant manager with Euroopera from 1999 to 2003 and worked at State Opera Plovdiv from 2003 to 2005, chief stage director at Burgas from 2005 and at Rousse from 2006, and has been director of the State Opera in Burgas since 2007. He directs as well as administers; his stagings include Orff's Carmina Burana. He has taught at the National Academy of Music since 2009, first in acting, and became an associate professor in the department of musical-stage arts in 2016 and a professor in April 2025. The Municipality of Burgas gave him its Emil Tchakarov award in 2013. He is the son of the composer Alexander Tekeliev. His early stage parts, taken while he was still a student, included Bartolo and Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Mamma Agata in Donizetti's Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali and Salieri in Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, and he concertised in Austria, Germany, Greece, Slovakia and Turkey. He continued his vocal studies in Vienna with Ralf Döring and worked with Euroopera before the Plovdiv, Burgas and Rousse houses, and Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly, La bohème, Macbeth and Manon Lescaut are among his productions.