Stefani Krasteva

Christmas Day in Bulgaria Hall has twice belonged in part to Stefani Krasteva — in 2020 and again in 2024 she sang in the Sofia Philharmonic's festive concerts, on programmes that moved from Franck and the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria through Gruber's Stille Nacht and arias by Puccini and Bizet to film scores by Nino Rota and John Williams, with Bulgarian composers alongside. Born in 1994, she trained at the Dobri Hristov National School of Arts in Varna and then at the vocal faculty of the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia, where her first stage roles were Bastienne in Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne and Dolcina in Puccini's Suor Angelica. Children's opera followed at the Sofia Opera and Ballet, with the title role in Cui's Little Red Riding Hood and the Princess in Puss in Boots. She debuted at the Ruse State Opera as Gilda in November 2017 and at the Sofia Opera as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin in February 2019, having won a Through Hardships to the Stars scholarship the previous November, on a selection made by Krassimira Stoyanova. She studied singing with Ivanka Ninova at the academy in Sofia and acting with Plamen Kartalov, and took prizes at the Art Stars competition in Varna, the Balkan Romance festival of Russian song and the Slavic Bell youth festival. With the Sofia Philharmonic she has sung Pergolesi's Stabat Mater and Mahler's Fourth Symphony under Sascha Goetzel and appeared with the Cantilena Chamber Collegium. In 2016 she sang Lazar Nikolov's Metamorphoses at the March Musical Days in Ruse, in 2017 she took part in Krassimira Stoyanova's masterclass at the Apollonia festival, and October 2019 brought Christiania in Goleminov's Zachary the Painter at the Sofia Opera.