Mihail Mihaylov

Violin came first for Mihail Mihaylov, who began singing lessons only at sixteen and took his degree in 2011 from the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia, in the class of Ivanka Ninova, with master classes from Hristina Angelakova and Anna Tomowa-Sintow. Born in Veliko Tarnovo in 1987, he was still a student when he made his stage debut at twenty-two as Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia — the lyric and bel canto ground he has worked since, at Bulgarian houses. His student roles included Edoardo Milfort in La cambiale di matrimonio and Ernesto in Don Pasquale, and soon after graduating he was singing Nemorino, Alfredo and Camille de Rosillon as a guest of the Konstantin Kisimov theatre and of the Varna music theatre. With the Sofia Philharmonic, where he has been a frequent guest soloist since 2012, he has taken the tenor solos in the Mozart, Saint-Saëns and Verdi requiems, Beethoven's Ninth and Rossini's Stabat mater, and recorded La traviata in the studio. He sang Verdi's Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic in 2013, Bacchus at the Herrenchiemsee Festspiele, made a recital tour in Osaka in 2014 and appeared with the Osaka Philharmonic in 2015.