Boris Hristov: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Bulgarian opera singer Boris Hristov - bass. In 1975 he was awarded the title of People's Artist. This performer is considered one of the largest basses in the second half of the twentieth century. In the repertoire of Boris Khristov, church hymns can be found of Russian and Bulgarian origin. The future singer was born in Plovdiv in 1914, on May 18.

Biography

Boris Hristov comes from the family of a Bulgarian national revolutionary and social activist Kiril Sovichanov. His father is from Vardar Macedonia. The singing talent of the future opera singer manifested itself in his youth, when he entered the choir of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Starting in 1933, the young man was also a member of the Gusla male choir.

Creativity

Boris III, the Bulgarian Tsar, in 1942 heard the singing of Boris Christ in the cathedral. Being strongly impressed, he appointed the performer a state scholarship for further training in this art. Boris Hristov since 1942until 1945, intermittently, he took lessons from Riccardo Straccari. An Italian baritone taught him vocals.

In 1943, after the political regime in Italy changed, the training was interrupted. The performer returned to Bulgaria. In 1944 he went to Germany to study the German operatic repertoire, but he was arrested in Austria, and Boris ended up in an internment camp. After his release, the singer went to Italy and continued to study with Straccari.

He made his debut in concert in 1945 in Rome, within the walls of the Santa Cecilia Academy. Then Hristov performed several works from the Russian and Italian repertoire. On the opera stage, this man made his debut in 1946, in the theater of the city of Reggio di Calabria. Then the singer in La bohème Puccini sang the part of Collin.

Boris has performed at the world's leading theaters: the Vienna State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the Colon Theatre, the Paris Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala. He participated in the Salzburg and Lucerne International Music Festivals.

Boris has performed at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, New York's Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, London's Albert Hall, and Vienna's Musikverein.

The singer did not perform in Russia. The peak of the artist's artistic career came in the fifties and the first half of the sixties of the twentieth century. In the seventies, Boris gradually reduced his performing activities. His last concert was in Rome in 1986.

Personality

Like an opera singerBoris Hristov is known for his performances in the Italian and Russian repertoires. His most famous parties include Boris and Dositheus, Philip II, Mephistopheles, Ivan Susanin, Moses.

In the performer's repertoire, an important place was occupied by chamber lyrics by famous Russian composers - Glinka, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov.

He especially appreciated Mussorgsky, the performer certainly included his music in concert programs. In the period from 1955 to 1957, for the first time in history, he recorded a complete collection of romances and songs by the composer. Biographers of Boris speak of the complex nature of his relationships with other musicians. This fact sometimes led to public scandals.