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Raina Kabaivanska
OMRI
Raina Kabaivanska OMRI
Райна Кабаиванска
	Kabaivanska as Tosca with Enrique Baquerizo in Madrid, 2004
Born	15 December 1934 (age 90); Burgas, Kingdom of Bulgaria
Citizenship	Bulgaria and Italy
Education	Bulgarian State Conservatoire
Occupations	Operatic soprano; academic teacher;
Years active	1957–present
Awards	Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2000)
Website	rainakabaivanska.net

Raina Yakimova Kabaivanska OMRI (Bulgarian: Райна Якимова Кабаиванска; born 15 December 1934) is a Bulgarian opera singer, one of the leading lirico-spinto sopranos of her generation, particularly associated with Verdi and Puccini, although she sang a wide range of roles.^[1]

Biography

Born in Burgas, Bulgaria, she studied in Sofia with Prokopova and Yosifov, and made her debut at the Bulgarian National Opera in Sofia as Tatjana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in 1957.^[1] The following year, she left for Italy for further studies with Zina Fumagalli-Riva in Milan and with Giulia Tess in Vercelli. Two years later she made a breakthrough in Fano, Italy, as Nedda in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. In 1961, she gave her first performance at La Scala in Milan, as Agnese in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, opposite Dame Joan Sutherland.^[1] She sang widely in Italy, Genoa, Venice, Parma and notably in Turin in 1973, as Elena in I vespri siciliani, in the only production ever directed by Maria Callas.

In 1962, she made her debuts at both the Royal Opera House in London, as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Nedda. She went on performing at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Paris Opéra, the Vienna State Opera, the Budapest Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, etc.

She also appeared in a few opera films, notably Pagliacci, opposite Jon Vickers in 1968, Il trovatore, opposite Franco Bonisolli, in 1975, and Tosca, opposite Plácido Domingo, in 1976.

Kabaivanska has received the following international opera awards: Bellini (1965), Viotti d'Oro (1970), Puccini (1978), Illica (1979), Monteverdi (1980), the Award of Accademia 'Medici' – Lorenzo il Magnifico, Florence (1990), the Grand Prix 'A Life, Dedicated to the Music', Venice (2000).^[2]

Kabaivanska delivered a performance of the "Ave Maria" from the opera Otello by Giuseppe Verdi to open the funeral mass for Luciano Pavarotti in Modena, Italy on 8 September 2007.

Kabaivanska also played the Comtesse in Tchaikowsky's Queen of Spades, in a series of five performances (31 January – 19 February 2008) at the Capitole de Toulouse.

She is a professor in Italy at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, at the Vecchi-Tonelli Music Institute in Modena, and at New Bulgarian University in Sofia.^[3] She is also a jury member for many prestigious competitions all over the world.

Repertory

Composer	Opera	Role
Giuseppe Verdi	Don Carlo	Elisabeth of Valois
	Otello	Desdemona
	La traviata	Violetta Valery
	Falstaff	Alice Ford
	Il trovatore	Leonora
	La forza del destino	Leonora
	Les vêpres siciliennes	La Duchesse Hélène
	Ernani	Elvira
	Requiem	Soprano
Giacomo Puccini	Madama Butterfly	Cio-Cio San
	Turandot	Liu
	Tosca	Floria Tosca
	Manon Lescaut	Manon Lescaut
Richard Wagner	Rienzi	Irene
Francesco Cilea	Adriana Lecouvreur	Adriana
Gaetano Donizetti	Roberto Devereux	Elisabetta
Charles Gounod	Faust	Marguerite
Ruggero Leoncavallo	Pagliacci	Nedda
Jules Massenet	Manon	Manon Lescaut
Alfredo Catalani	La Wally	Wally
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky	The Queen of Spades	Lisa
	Eugene Onegin	Tatiana
Richard Strauss	Capriccio	Countess
Riccardo Zandonai	Francesca da Rimini	Francesca
Gaspare Spontini	La Vestale	Julia
Christoph Willibald Gluck	Armide	Armide
Leoš Janáček	The Makropulos Case	Emilia Marty
Franz Lehár	The Merry Widow	Hanna Glawari

Honors

Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic – December 7, 2000

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Celletti, Rodolfo (2001). "Kabaivanska, Raina". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 13 (2nd ed.). Macmillan Publishers Limited. p. 298.
^ Premio "Una vita nella musica", given by Associazione "Omaggio a Venezia" and "Gran Teatro La Fenice".
^ "Raina Kabaivanska - Career". rainakabaivanska.net. Retrieved 7 December 2021.