Emanuil Manolov

Emanuil Manolov studied at the Moscow Conservatory and returned to Bulgaria in 1885. He worked with military bands and school choirs and settled in Kazanlak. Siromahkinya, drawn from Ivan Vazov's poem, is counted the first Bulgarian opera; sources date its first staging in Kazanlak to 1899 or 1900; he left it unfinished. His compositions include choral kitki, school songs, marches and arrangements, and Kakva moma vidyah, mamo. Born in Gabrovo in 1860, he died in Kazanlak in 1902, at forty-two. A glacier in Antarctica carries his name. Before Moscow he sang in Georgi Baydanov's choir at Svishtov and spent time in Bucharest and Odessa, and his conservatory years covered piano, flute, harmony and composition. Back in Bulgaria he played in the band of the First Sofia Regiment, taught singing at the teachers' school in Kazanlak from 1886, and served as bandmaster of the Twenty-First Infantry Regiment at Asenovgrad from 1890 to 1899, the first Bulgarian in such a post, his predecessors having been Czech, before taking the band of the Twenty-Third Shipka Regiment and the choir and orchestra of the Iskra reading room. His children's songs were gathered in Slaveevi gori.