Boris Christoff

Boris Hristov ( Bulgarian Борис Христов; born May 18, 1914 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, † June 28, 1993 in Rome, Italy) was a Bulgarian opera and lieder singer in the vocal bass that's spent most of his career in Italy and as Artist of works Modest Mussorgsky and Verdi was known.

Life

Boris Hristov was born in the family of Kiril Sowitschanow in Plovdiv, where his father worked as a teacher at this time. However, his family is from Bitola in Macedonia (see Macedonian Bulgarians ). As a boy Boris Hristov sang in the choir of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia. Although he completed a law degree and practiced singing had only incidentally, offered him a scholarship in 1942. He accepted it and moved in the same year to Italy to study singing. Christows official debut took place in 1946 in Reggio Calabria as Colline in La Bohème instead. In the 1950s and 1960s, he reached the peak of his career, which he only gradually degraded in the 1970s. During this time he sang, among others, the Gurnemanz ( Parsifal ) in Italian and took twice the Boris Godunov, whereby he interpreted differentiates the three games of Boris, Pimen and the Varlaam. He also offered regularly represents all songs by Modest Mussorgsky, which in the West was still unusual at the time.

Boris Hristov was the first of the internationally acclaimed Bulgarian bass; followed him, inter alia, Nikolaj Gjaurow ( whose career and repertoire similarities with his own show ), Dimitar Petkov, Nikola Gjusselew, Sabin Markov and Anton Djakow.

Honors

1969 Christow was awarded the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. In the capital Sofia a music center was named after him, which has been awarded by the Bulgarian state with the European Heritage Label.