Don Carlos

** Opera by Giuseppe Verdi

Conductor Vladimir Boshnakov

Director, set and costume designer Denis Ivanov

Concertmaster Ana Ivanova

Chorus masters Mladen Stanev, Stefania Ruseva

King Philip II – Yulian Konstantinov, Petar Naydenov, Ivaylo Dzhurov

Don Carlos – Boris Taskov, Ivan Momirov

Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa – Kiril Manolov, Plamen Dimitrov

Grand Inquisitor – Ivaylo Dzhurov, Evgeniy Arabadjiev

Elisabeth de Valois – Rusalina Mochukova, Tanya Ivanova

Princess Eboli – Daniela Dyakova, Mihaela Berova, Maria Radoeva

A Monk – Aleksandar Marulev, Martin Dimitrievski

Count of Lerma – Ivaylo Yovchev, Stoyan Buyukliev

Thibault, Elisabeth’s page – Emilia Terzieva, Viktoria Bezotechestvo

A Voice from Heaven – Emilia Terzieva

Countess of Aremberg – Saray Diaz

Delegates – Martin Dimitrievski, Teodor Petkov, Ignat Zhelev, Sasho Stoykov, Petar Yankulov

Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos opens the 56th Festival of Opera and Ballet Art with premiere performances on November 20 and 21. The new production by the State Opera – Stara Zagora reveals a world of political and religious violence, in which love, friendship and the dream of freedom collide with the ruthless machinery of power. The characters are not merely historical figures from the court of Philip II, but people trapped in a perfectly organized system that gradually destroys everything personal – love, friendship, doubt and freedom of choice.

Director Denis Ivanov, who is also responsible for the set, costumes and lighting, creates a monumental marble world governed by merciless order. The walls divide the characters, while the austere square platform simultaneously becomes an altar, a courtroom, a grave and a future pyre. The historical era is not recreated literally, but is evoked through the costumes, objects and architectural traces that appear and disappear, while the stone environment remains unchanged. Seemingly eternal and unshakable, this “stone empire” is scarred by the wounds of human passions, transforming Verdi’s work into a contemporary tragedy about the individual confronting a system that claims to possess absolute truth.

For Denis Ivanov, the production is also a deeply personal gesture. It was a performance of Don Carlos that he saw on the stage of the Stara Zagora Opera in 2007, as a seventeen-year-old student, that awakened his interest in directing and set design and determined his creative path. The new production is dedicated to the artists Boris and Tsvetanka Stoynov, who created the stage world that left a lasting impression on his artistic consciousness. His return to the same work is both a continuation of that memory and a hope that the path of a young person toward opera may once again begin in the auditorium.

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