Boris Christoff

Boris Christoff read law at Sofia University, took his degree and was working as a magistrate while singing with the Gusla choir when a state grant sent him to Italy in 1942. He studied with the baritone Riccardo Stracciari in Italy; the stage debut followed at Reggio Calabria in 1946, as Colline. Within a decade La Scala, La Fenice and Covent Garden were his regular houses and the Russian bass roles his territory — Boris Godunov above all, with Pimen and Dosifei, and beside them Philip II in Don Carlo and Gounod's Méphistophélès. In 1952 Issay Dobrowen had him sing Boris, Varlaam and Pimen in the same Paris recording of Boris Godunov. He was also the first singer to record all sixty-three of Mussorgsky's songs. His American debut, in San Francisco, waited until 1956. He received the Léonie Sonning Prize in 1969 and founded an academy in Rome for young singers. He died in Rome in 1993 and is buried in Sofia. He was born in Plovdiv, and the Rome Opera joined the houses that engaged him regularly; Don Basilio belonged to his stage repertoire, and his concert work reached into sacred music, among it Grechaninov's Liturgia domestica. The Sofia house in which he had lived is now the Boris Christoff Museum and Music Centre.