SOLE e AMORE / SUN AND LOVE

The fourth concert of the Music Without Borders series was presented on 23 October 2021 on the stage of the Stara Zagora Opera House. SOLE e AMORE / SUN AND LOVE continues the already established tradition of special multi-genre chamber concerts, which present the audience with surprisingly pleasant encounters with unfamiliar works from the world's musical treasury, interpreted by the great operatic names, talented instrumentalists, actors and poets.

This time the focus is on the world's mezzo-soprano MARIANA PENCHEVA, who chooses the stage of the Stara Zagora Opera for the premiere of the chamber concert with the sparkling title "Sun and Love", borrowed from Puccini's song of the same name. Mariana Pencheva has selected the chamber works of the composers whose operas are the foundation of her remarkable international career. Her partner on stage is the young and talented pianist Vasilena Atanasova, and their tandem is joined by the actor Plamen Manasiev, who will bring additional refined colour to the programme with a selection of love lyrics.

"I have known Vasilena Atanasova since she was a child, as she is the daughter of one of my closest friends from my student years. She was formed as a musician literally before my eyes and I had the opportunity to follow her development step by step. She and I both work as a tandem at the NMA "Prof Pancho Vladigerov". For some time we had the desire to do a concert together and we had set this idea in our future plans.

When we shared this with the director of the Stara Zagora Opera Ognyan Draganov, we received an invitation from him to prepare an all-chamber recital. From there on things developed very quickly and easily. We settled on music by composers whose operas I have sung on stage many times and feel particularly close to, but had not sung so much of their chamber works before.

In this program we have included works by some of the most famous representatives of Italian bel canto, Gaetano Donizetti, of Romanticism with Giuseppe Verdi, followed by Giacomo Puccini , through which we move on to the verismo of Alfredo Catalani, Ruggero Leoncavallo and Amilcare Ponchielli.

Each of these works tells a story which, through the chamber form, reaches the listener immediately and unfolds in a much shorter time than in a classical operatic work.

Both Vasilena and I adore this program. We selected it in a natural way, having originally identified a much larger number of songs, so that we could select those that we feel most close to us and would like to share with the audience with great pleasure!" - says Mariana Pencheva.