Nicolai Ghiaurov

He was born September 13, 1929, in the exciting city búgara of Velingrado in the south of Bulgaria. During his childhood he learned to play several instruments. The forced military service of his country caused that one of his instructors, impressed by the power with which that young recruits intoned the chants, martial, we recommend to study with Christo Brambarov, baritone and teacher of singing. Spent a year with him, and then marched off to the USSR to continue his studies in elConservatorio of Moscow. He made his operatic debut in 1955, playing Don Basilio inthe barber of Seville, deGioacchino Rossini, and, immediately, he established himself as one of the greatest singers of his time. Throughout her life she played many characters, but his main performances were Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust, Philip II in Don Carlos, Don Giovanni in the opera of the same name by W. A. Mozart and the protagonist in Boris Godunov. Admired for his powerful voice, was particularly associated with performances of Giuseppe Verdi. He sang in the major opera houses of the world, as the Metropolitan of New York, Convent Garden and Glyndeburne in England, The Vienna State Opera, and dozens more during fifty years. In 1991 he was awarded the Legion of Honor of Arts and Letters of France for his interpretations of the operatic repertoire in French in all the world. Ghiaurov married the pianist Bulgarian Slatina Ghiaurov, and, eventually, with the soprano Italian Mirella Freni, with whom he worked in many different operas, such as for example The Boheme of G. Puccini. Both singers lived in Modena, the Italian city that saw the birth of Luciano Pavarotti. With a wide range of recordings, videos and presentations in general, Ghiaurov took the stage for the last time, and already seventy-year-old in the historic teatro La Fenice of Venice, to play the character that made his debut (Don Basilio). He died on 2 June 2004, at 74 years of age in Modena, because of a cardiac arrest, after remaining hospitalized for three weeks.