Aria of Albena (Albena)

Parashkev Hadjiev wrote Albena in 1962 to a libretto by Peter Filchev after Yordan Yovkov's play of the same name. Yovkov's subject is a village beauty complicit in her husband's murder, and the crowd that turns on her and then, at the last moment, pities her. Hadjiev was the son of the conductor Todor Hadjiev, an early champion of Bulgarian opera, and wrote more than twenty stage works of his own — the largest operatic output of any Bulgarian composer. His writing keeps the voice foremost and stays within a tonal, song-derived idiom.