A gifted artiste of world renown, but also a very warm person, Stefka Evstatieva has performed on all of the world’s most prestigious opera stages and has starred in the lead roles in the operas Aida, Othello, La Forza del Destino, Don Carlos, Un Ballo in Maschera by Verdi, Don Giovanni by Mozart and many, many more.

Stefka Evstatieva graduated from the secondary school in Silistra and then went on to study at the Academy of Music in Sofia with Elena Kiselova.

“I was born at a festival,” Stefka Evstatieva says. “My father who sang with the Silistra mixed choir was set to take part in a festival of Danube choirs in Rousse. My mother, herself from Rousse, insisted on going with him. They took a ship along the Danube. Whether that was the reason or not, but I was born in Rousse, earlier than expected. Years later, my first performance at an opera theatre was again in Rousse. Later I was able to sing at the world’s foremost operas – Covent Garden, La Scala, the Metropolitan, on all leading opera stages in Europe. I have always selected my repertoire so as to suit my voice best, I have never made any compromise in this regard.”

From the late 1970s until the turn of the new millennium, Stefka Evstatieva was very active as a performer. Often, as soon as she stepped off stage, she would take a plane to the other end of the world to sing in Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, the whole of North America and, of course, Europe. Many of her partners on stage are close friends of hers, and she has innumerable interesting stories to tell.

“I have friends who have been insisting that I write a book about my life. Some time ago I decided to do that and I wanted to start with a photograph, but then the album disappeared. It was my first album of photographs and on the first page I kept a picture of my mother and father at a rehearsal for some operetta. At the time the picture was taken, my mother was pregnant with me. So, that was my first appearance on stage, though I was actually out of the picture at the time. If I do write a book, I shall certainly tell the story of my appearance at the Rousse opera house. I was in Rousse, at a wedding, renowned tenor Kiril Krastev was there as well. That was where we met for the first time and he asked me what I planned to do. I answered that I wanted to stay with the academy masterclass, to learn different roles but he said: “Look here, the only place roles are done is at the theatre.” Not long after that came my first success at the Rousse opera. That was I 1971. In 1974 I entered the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow – a very important stepping stone in my career. I never thought I could reach the third round, but ultimately, I won second prize. A lot of people heard me perform there, I received invitations for other competitions, people were talking about me and gradually I started asserting myself as a performer.”

Stefka Evstatieva has been living in USA for more than twenty years; the last fifteen of them she has been working with the Gergana Bulgarian children’s choir in New York.

“It was something that happened quite by accident – in Bulgaria a crisis was raging and I had a full schedule in Canada and USA for a long period ahead. Together with my husband, we decided to rent a house so our daughter could go to school. First I was in Dallas, then I had an appearance at the Metropolitan, so gradually we settled down there. As to Gergana choir, the idea belongs to a pupil of mine – Gergana Velinova, a jazz singer, whose dream it was to set up a Bulgarian children’s choir. Our repertoire consists of Bulgarian songs, but even if the original is in English we translate it into Bulgarian. The translations are done, outstandingly, by Valentin Hadjiiski – teacher at the Bulgarian school. This year we have been invited to take part in the celebrations marking the 10th anniversary since the Bulgarian school in Paris was founded. We have been invited to sing a song with the New York Philharmonic; I myself will probably be soloist.”

The audio features the following performances by Stefka Evstatieva:

- Aria of Amelia, Ballo in Maschera by Verdi;

- Aria of Liza, The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky;

- Aria of Mimi, La Bohème by Puccini;

- Aria of Margherita, Mephistopheles by Arrigo Boito.

English version: Milena Daynova