Despite a third wave of Covid-19 infections across Europe, in Bulgaria, classical music plays on. — AFP picSOFIA, Feb 28 — With an orchestra spread out across the entire parterre, audiences limited to the balconies, and no breaks but plenty of disinfectant, the Sofia Opera is one of the few music venues still hosting live performances in Europe.
Despite the disinfectant, social-distancing and staff taking people’s temperature, a festive spirit reigns at the historic opera house in the Bulgarian capital, a stark contrast to its silenced counterparts in Paris, Vienna or Milan. Even as Europe struggles with a third wave of infections, in part due to a number of mutations that spread more easily, Kartaloff expects the opera to remain open.Tragedy has touched the operatic community, and not just on stage: In November, Bulgarian tenor Kamen Chanev died of Covid-19, three weeks after he debuted Otello in the central Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora.“That’s the risk of this profession — it holds us like a drug, it’s stronger than fear,” Momekova says.
“We are acoustically louder for the audience than normal so the orchestra has to play very quietly and listen even more to the singers,” Christ says. Thanks to Kartaloff’s ingenuity, the Sofia Opera has found a number of ways to perform amid the pandemic: “Swan Lake” was staged on the pontoon of a lake near Sofia, while other operas reverberated through an old Roman fortress.
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