The Summer Opera Festival “Stage of the Centuries” 2025 officially starts on June 27th, Friday, at 9:00 PM with the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” performed by the Konstantin Kisimov Musical and Drama Theater – Veliko Tarnovo.

The libretto, based on the comedy by French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, is a fantastic farce, a witty satire dealing with explosive social themes, banned by Louis XVI as well as later by Joseph II, the new Holy Roman Emperor. However, censorship did not prohibit the adaptation of the play into a libretto, which Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte used for their opera. The play turns the character of Count Almaviva from the romantic hero in “The Barber of Seville” into a ruthless villain and is generally critical of aristocratic corruption, contrasting it with the virtue of the lower class. Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte delve deeper into the characters’ souls and give significance to the relationships between genders that far exceeds the original.

The production is classical, with continuous stage action, scene within a scene, intersecting two main plot lines: Count Almaviva’s attempt to make Susanna, his valet’s fiancée, his mistress, and Countess Rosina’s attempt to regain her unfaithful husband’s love…

Production Team:
Conductor – Georgi Patrikov
Director – Petko Bonev
Set Design and Costumes – Asya Stoimenova
Choreography – Katya Bogdanova
Chorus Master – Yanitsa Parvanova
Concertmaster – Maria Pavlova
Accompanists – Rositsa Tarapanova, Kristiyana Abracheva
Assistant Director – Rumyana Atanasova
3D Mapping – Lora Runevska – elektrik.me

Featuring: Nikola Ivanov, Branimir Nedkov, Teodora Petrova, Mirayna Kalushkova, Li Yaikai, Boyan Savov, Rumyana Kostova, Dimitrina Kechedzhieva, Mirela Yabanzhieva, Krista Petkova, Moira Yankova, Irina Dobrovolskaya, Yoana Kadiyska, Ralitsa Vasileva, Eva Zhivkovskaya, Plamen Kumpikov, Viktor Krastanov, Tsing Fang Hu, Dragomir Shopov, Dimitra Koleva, Ivana Kovachevich, Nikola Popov, Stefan Stoev, Mariyana Stefanova, Tsvetomira Pencheva.
Orchestra, Chorus, and Ballet of MDT “Konstantin Kisimov” Veliko Tarnovo