Elena Tchavdarova

A mezzo-soprano from a family of musicians, Elena Tchavdarova-Issa has a repertoire including roles in operas by Verdi, Bizet, Mascagni, Tchaikovsky and Borodin. She sang in Prince Igor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and appeared with the Milan Philharmonic under Riccardo Chailly, and has worked in Lisbon, Madrid, Bilbao, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro as well as at State Opera Plovdiv and the Sofia Opera. Nicolai Gedda, Ghena Dimitrova and Nicola Ghiuselev have been among her colleagues on those evenings. She trained at the Central Studio for opera singing attached to the Sofia Opera, and in 1996 took first prize at the sixth opera singing competition in Bilbao. She became a soloist of the Plovdiv house in 1992 and sang at the National Opera in Sofia from 1997, with further appearances in Russia, the Netherlands and Belgium.