Pavel Gerdjikov

Over a hundred roles passed through Pavel Gerdjikov's career, and he directed dozens of productions besides. Born in Kardzhali in 1938, he graduated from the Bulgarian State Academy of Music in 1961, specialised in Berlin and made his Sofia Opera debut at twenty-three. The bass repertoire he built was unusually wide — Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno, Prince Galitsky in Prince Igor, Falstaff, Baron Ochs — and he sang a great deal of Bulgarian opera at a period when new work still reached the main stage. He appeared in Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Naples and Belgrade. Direction and teaching took an increasing share of his working life: he taught acting and opera direction at the National Academy of Music for half a century, and held the Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the Marin Goleminov Award and Bulgarian National Radio's Golden Bugle. He sang under Nayden Todorov across many seasons, including the American tour of Rigoletto in 2003. He died in January 2023. He studied at the State Academy of Music in Sofia in the classes of Ana Todorova, Iliya Yosifov and Lyubomir Pipkov, and was a laureate of the Enescu and Erkel competitions and first-prize winner of the Second Competition for Young Opera Singers in Sofia. His guest appearances took him to the Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals and to the theatres of Nancy and Reims, and he toured with the Sofia National Opera company in Europe, Asia, Japan, Australia and Latin America.