Nikolai Giaurov

Born Sept. 13, 1929, in Velingrad. Bulgarian opera singer (bass). People’s Artist of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1962).

Giaurov studied at the conservatory in Sofia in the class of Kh. Brumbarov and perfected his art at the Moscow Conservatory (from which he graduated in 1955). In 1955 he became a soloist with the Sofia National Opera. In 1956–57 he was an apprentice and in 1957–58 a soloist at the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR. He has been a soloist with La Scala in Milan since 1960. Giaurov sings both comic and lyric parts. His roles include Don Basilio in Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Mephis-topheles in Gounod’s Faust, Pimen and Varlaam in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Galitskii in Borodin’s Prince Igor, Creon in Cherubini’s Medea, Gremin in Tchaikovsky’s Evgenii Onegin, Daland in R. Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, and Filippo in Verdi’s Don Carlos. He has toured England, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. Giaurov has been awarded the Dimitrov Prize (1959 and 1966).