Elena Stoyanova

Chosen while still a student to sing the Queen of the Night at the Sofia Opera — Asen Naydenov made the decision — Elena Stoyanova had come there from Asenovgrad by way of the Plovdiv music school and the class of Lilyana Zhablenska at the academy in Sofia. She attended summer academies at Weimar and Siena, and then the studio for young opera singers at La Scala, where Giulietta Simionato and Luciano Silvestri coached her. She won the Svetoslav Obretenov national competition, joined the soloists of the Sofia Opera, and built a repertoire of roles across Mozart, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Bizet, Tchaikovsky and Britten, with the Mozart and Verdi Requiems beside them. Abroad she has sung in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and the United States, and appeared as the Queen of Shemakha in The Golden Cockerel at the Théâtre du Châtelet. She has taught since 2008.