The masterpiece of Russian classical music Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky will be presented on 31 July and 1 August. The surprise that stage-director Academician Plamen Kartalov has in store is the finale – instead the death of the Russian sovereign the show ends with a pageant outside St. Basil’s Cathedral. The show was premiered with great success last summer in the square outside St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia.

Boris Spasov, the conductor of Boris Godunov on the two festival nights, says more about the role of the festival and about the creative input of Academician Plamen Kartalov:

„He is an exceptional operatic stage-director and has made a brilliant and dynamic show with a very attractive set design. The faded birch trees symbolize the plight of the people. The Stage of the Centuries festival is an indelible part of Bulgaria’s cultural policy. At its first edition, the opera Ivaylo was presented and the show’s conductor was the opera’s composer, the great Marin Goleminov. The show was directed by Plamen Kartalov who has played a vital role for the festival. The forum’s scale shows in that it attracts many foreign visitors apart from Bulgarian opera lovers.”

Interestingly, the opera Boris Godunov has several different orchestrations. After Mussorgsky wrote it he completed its orchestration a few months later. The superb orchestration of Nikolay Rimski-Korsakov was used to stage the opera for many years. Dmitry Shostakovich was another big name who worked on the masterpiece. Plamen Kartalov’s show is based on the version of conductor David Lloyd-Jones.

English version: Daniela Konstantinova