Ivaylo Mihaylov

Singer, teacher and stage director, Ivaylo Mihaylov took his singing diploma with Valeri Popova at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in 1997 and then went looking for the Italian school at its source: Giuseppe Taddei at the Boris Christoff academy in Rome, Luigi Alva and William Matteuzzi at Osimo, and study with the tenor Kaludi Kaludov. Alfredo, Cavaradossi, Don José, Radamès, Pinkerton, Rodolfo, the Duke of Mantua, Hoffmann, Faust and Ernani make up the spine of his repertoire; he sang in a Plovdiv Tosca in 2009 and in Karl Jenkins's The Armed Man in Sofia in 2018. Further degrees in vocal pedagogy, arts management and music-stage direction lie behind the second half of his working life: he has directed, beginning with Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne, and has taught and adjudicated as far afield as Vietnam. He has belonged to the soloist ensemble of the State Opera in Stara Zagora since 2018. He came to singing from the Stefka Blagoeva boys' choir in Plovdiv, and a Ministry of Culture scholarship in 2002 took him to Rome, with Raina Kabaivanska among his teachers at Osimo. His debut at the National Opera and Ballet in Sofia came in 2012 as Ernani, followed the next year by an appearance in Bucharest and later by engagements in Porto and Cagliari, and with the Spoleto company he sang La Bohème in Japan in 2015, Un ballo in maschera in 2016 and Carmen in 2017. The Plovdiv Award came to him in 2022.