Podcast in English
Text size
Bulgarian National Radio © 2024 All Rights Reserved

Happy birthday, Lili Ivanova!

Photo: lili.bg

There is no other artist in the history of Bulgarian pop music with such a biography. Lily Ivanova has been on the stage for six whole decades if we assume that her career as a singer began in the early 1960s. Lily Ivanova was born in the small Bulgarian town of Kubrat in an ordinary family. She graduated from the nursing school in Varna and worked as a nurse for a very short time. In 1964, Lili Ivanova scored her first big success in “Universiada” hall in Sofia.

Following a series of international tours, Lili Ivanova was invited to perform at a pop sing festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The festival took place at “Mara Kazinyo” stadium with capacity of 30,000 people. Genko Genov, founder of the Golden Orpheus International Song Contest, joined Lili in this adventure. “The audience was noisy and intemperate and Lili looked so small and fragile on the stage of the large stadium. But when she began singing, there was dead silence. Then, the audience applauded her performance. It was an incredible experience”, recalled Genko Genov.

Lili Ivanova earned more than 20 music awards. She has released 38 solo albums, more than 45 small records with singles and over 15 compilations. She toured the former USSR, Germany, Cuba, Japan, Turkey, Czechia, former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Greece, Portugal and other countries. At the end of the 20th century, the Bulgarian pop diva gave exciting concerts in the USA and Canada where she sang for Bulgarian emigrants.

In 2020, she postponed some of her concerts because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, she released two albums with concert recordings. Her creative longevity is unique- like a fairytale created with a lot of work a self-reliance. 




Последвайте ни и в Google News Showcase, за да научите най-важното от деня!
Listen to the daily news from Bulgaria presented in "Bulgaria Today" podcast, available in Spotify.

More from category

Apollonia Arts Festival celebrates 40 years since its creation

A few years before we, Bulgarians, felt the breath of freedom that reached us with the fall of the Berlin Wall, musicians, artists, writers, theater artists performed for the first time on the stages of the Apollonia Arts Festival in Sozopol. The..

published on 8/26/24 11:29 AM

“Thracian mysteries” presents the life, culture and beliefs of the ancient tribes that once inhabited the Bulgarian lands of today

For the fourth time, the “Thracian mysteries” festival offers a journey back in time to thousands of years ago with reenactments in which viewers are able to come in contact with the rituals, way of life and beliefs of the ancient tribes that once..

published on 8/23/24 11:33 AM

The visual story of Mykolaiv: Tattoos of War, a photographic evidence from Ukraine

Five photo series show the horrors of war in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv . The exhibition "The Visual History of Mykolaiv: Tattoos of War" will be presented today at 7pm as part of the 11th FotoFabrika Festival and will be on show until 23 September..

published on 8/23/24 7:45 AM