Ivaylo Krinchev has recently taken over as the new conductor of the State Opera House in the southern Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora. We talk to him about the challenges of this position:

„The Stara Zagora Opera House has great traditions but it needs new members of the orchestra and the choir. I am very happy that we have successfully staged the classics in the genre of opera, Georges Bizet's Carmen. It was an open-air show during the Augusta Trajana Festival. The audiences of Stara Zagora love their opera house and on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the institution we had a full house.”

Ivaylo Krinchev has graduated from the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia with majors in Choral Conducting under Prof. Lydia Giuleva and in Opera & Symphony Conducting under Dimitar Manolov. He has attended master classes led by Ilya Musin in St. Petersburg, and by Karl Österreicher in Vienna. He goes back in time on how his interest in conducting originated:  

„A crucial point for me was my encounter with late Dimitar Manolov. At the time I met him he was chief conductor of the Sofia Opera House. A year later he succeeded the great Dobrin Petkov to lead the Philharmonic Orchestra of Plovdiv. The main lesson I learned from Dimitar Manolov was that every good musician is able to lead an orchestra but to make a quality conductor one has to master the philosophy of the job.”

As a young conductor Ivaylo Krinchev worked in the Burgas Philharmonic and from 1996 till 1999 was director of the Burgas Opera. Under his creative leadership the opera staged for the first time Don Juan by Mozart and Norma by Vincenzo Bellini. On the next year he was already appointed conductor at Eurostage production agency in Amsterdam, Holland. In this capacity he conducted a few opera shows across Europe. In the meantime he has been teaching Opera Singing with Conductor and Opera & Symphony Conducting majors at the Academy of Music. Since 2005 he has been associate professor there. 

Ivaylo Krinchev's name is also known in South Korea where he has held master classes in conducting and opera interpretation in different universities and has conducted symphony and chamber orchestras.

Ivaylo Krinchev gives us some highlights in the forthcoming new season of the State Opera in Stara Zagora:

„In May and June I was not yet appointed to my current position, so the opera house followed the repertoire plan drafted by the former leadership. One of the highlights during the new season will be the opening an alternative stage at Stara Zagora Puppet Theater. We will premiere a production of Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti, an opera that has for a long time been absent from the playbill of the Stara Zagora Opera.”

English Daniela Konstantinova

The audio file contains the following works:

1. St. Paul Suite by Gustav Holst in the rendition of the Royal String Orchestra

2. A fragment from Symphony No. 10 by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy performed by the Royal String Orchestra

3. An aria of Lenski from Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky performed by Kamen Chanev with the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra