Deyan Vatchkov

At twenty-one Deyan Vatchkov was admitted to the academy of La Scala, where Leyla Gencer, Luciana Serra, Luigi Alva and Teresa Berganza took charge of a voice trained in Sofia by Konstantin Karapetrov. Born in the Bulgarian capital in 1979, he won first prize at the Iris Adami Corradetti competition in Padua together with the Arrigo Boito special prize, and carried off the Verdi prize at the Belvedere in Vienna. His repertoire includes the Verdi bass roles Zaccaria in Nabucco, Ramfis in Aida — beside Colline, Don Basilio and the Mozart parts, sung at La Scala, the Arena di Verona, the Teatro San Carlo, in Monte-Carlo, Vienna, Tokyo and Moscow, and with the opera at Perm. He joined the soloists of Varna State Opera in the 2013/14 season. He studied in Sofia with Konstantin Karapetrov and Nedyalkov, took both the Verdi and the Kammeroper prizes at the Belvedere and made a Vienna debut as Don Basilio, and in the La Scala studio years sang in Lucia di Lammermoor, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Verdi's Oberto. Engagements have taken him to Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Lausanne, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Toronto and Seattle, and in 2018 to the Beijing premiere of Thaïs with Plácido Domingo. He has worked under Muti, Maazel, Abbado, Chailly, Oren, Luisotti, Callegari, Renzetti and Ranzani, and with the directors Zeffirelli, Hugo de Ana, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Robert Carsen and Yánnis Kókkos.