Nicolai ghiaurov biography of albert einstein

1. Biography of Nicolai Ghiaurov
2. Early Life and Education
3. Operatic Career
4. Personal Life and Legacy

Biography of Nicolai Ghiaurov

Nicolai Ghiaurov, a Bulgarian opera singer (bass), was one of the most famous operatic basses of the post-war period. He was admired by opera lovers around the world for his powerful and magnificent voice, which, combined with his extraordinary stage charm, brought him the kind of success usually reserved for tenors and sopranos. His repertoire mainly consisted of roles from Verdi operas.

Early Life and Education

Nicolai Ghiaurov was born in the small Bulgarian town of Velingrad in 1929. From a young age, he had a love for music and learned to play the violin, clarinet, and trombone. While serving in the military, he took his first singing lessons, and an officer who heard him advised him to seek vocal instruction from Christo Brambarov, a well-known baritone from Sofia. Following this advice, Ghiaurov began taking lessons from Brambarov at the Bulgarian State Conservatory in 1949. Brambarov, who had received training in the Italian school of singing, passed on to the young bass the nuances and vocal style characteristic of Italian opera. These lessons enabled Nicolai to enter the Moscow Conservatory in 1950, which he successfully completed in 1955. In the same year, he won the Grand Prix at the International Vocal Competition in Paris and became the main prize winner and recipient of the gold medal at the Fifth International Youth Festival in Prague. This marked the beginning of the career of the then relatively unknown young opera bass.

Operatic Career

In 1955, Ghiaurov made his debut in Sofia in Rossini's opera "The Barber of Seville," where he played the role of Don Basilio. Two years later, he debuted at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov" in the role of Pimen (he would only take on the leading role in this opera in 1965). In 1960, he played the role of the vagabond Varlaam in the same opera at La Scala in Milan, marking his debut in this theater. Two years later, he made his debut at Covent Garden in Verdi's opera "La Forza del Destino," and in the same year, he appeared in Salzburg in Verdi's "Requiem" conducted by Herbert von Karajan. In 1963, he made his debut at the Lyric Opera in Chicago in "Mefistofele," and in November 1965, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut. Nicolai Ghiaurov sang in the largest opera houses around the world for almost 50 years.

Personal Life and Legacy

A fan of old opera recordings, football, and fishing, Ghiaurov lived a happy life with his second wife, soprano Mirella Freni, for 23 years. They first performed together on one stage in 1961 in Genoa, where they played in "Faust." Nicolai and Mirella got married in 1978 when neither of them had successful personal lives, and their previous marriages had ended. Ghiaurov had two children from his first marriage - conductor Vladimir Ghiaurov and actress Elena Ghiaurov. His final performance, in January 2004, was as Don Basilio in "The Barber of Seville" - ironically, the same role with which his opera career had begun. Nicolai Ghiaurov passed away on June 2, 2004, at a clinic in Modena at the age of 74. According to the American representative of the singer, Jack Mastroianni, Ghiaurov had been hospitalized due to kidney disease, and his death occurred as a result of cardiac arrest. Mirella Freni remained by her husband's side until the very end.