The conductor with Bulgarian roots, Italian upbringing and a German passport, Boian Videnoff – a talented and charming musician and manager with an enviable European career, was in Sofia in mid-March for two performances of "Madame Butterfly" with the participation of Kristine Opolais.

The day before the first performance we spoke with Boian Videnoff, who is the son of two exceptional Bulgarian musicians. His mother is famous violinist Dora Bratchkova, and his father – the magnificent baritone Lyubomir Videnov, who is remembered with great love in the Sofia Opera.

"I can only confirm this love for my father, here in the theater. I felt it two years ago, when I first came to conduct La Traviata. I grew up in Italy. I was one year old when my parents went there. The good thing is that I managed to learn Bulgarian after all. From an early age I started playing the violin, then the piano. They were both helping me and I even used to sing with my father. I love singing very much."

Conducting came after the violin and the piano. The most important mentor in Videnoff's life is renowned opera specialist Gianluigi Gelmetti. For five years, Boian studied with Gelmetti at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, travelled with him, assisted him. He also graduated from the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim and specialized in Berlin. Among his famous teachers is the legendary Jorma Panula. Meetings with Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Marcello Viotti and Günther Herbig were also part of his growth as a conductor. But what is his opinion of the Sofia Opera?

"Well, I don't know why, but here I feel like in a family. The level is very high! The orchestra members play with flexibility, they play very musically. I really enjoy working with them."

His first experience with the opera genre was in Sofia. "Plamen Kartalov gave me this chance and I am very grateful to him for that,” Videnoff says. According to him, the director of the Sofia Opera "holds the banner of great art high." It is Boian Videnoff who was the conductor who stood at the podium in the first appearances of famous star Sonya Yoncheva at the Sofia Opera. These were two performances of "La bohème" at the end of February and the beginning of March 2024.

"Sonya and I have had several gala concerts together and we are quite close friends. I remember last year Plamen Kartalov told me that he had this dream for Sonya to come one day. I told him that I would ask her. In my opinion, this was a big event for Sofia. It was important that she really came for a performance, not for a gala concert, and for her it was also a very, very emotional event."

We also talked about how at the age of 23, Boian Videnoff founded his own orchestra in Mannheim. A very bold and risky move. Asked how he dared to do it, he laughed and said: "I can't tell you how! I felt like I wanted to do it." He gives an example of how over 300 people apply for a position of a flutist in Germany and sometimes no one even gets the job. That's how the idea of ​​creating a group for young people who can learn how to play in an orchestra emerged.

Today, soloists of the Mannheim Philharmonic are some of the biggest stars. How did he manage to attract them?

"The first was Mischa Maisky, who came, because I knew his children – Lily and Sascha Maisky. They came as a trio and played Beethoven.” The story continues like a fairy tale: Mischa told Martha Argerich. Then came Sergei Babayan, whom Boian immediately became friends with. Then came Pinchas Zukerman, Maria João Pires, Gautier Capuçon.

We cannot miss his famous project for digitizing sheet music - Enote. A few years ago, the news came that something so innovative was being done and that a Bulgarian was at the heart of it.

"We continue to digitize and this is a big transformation," Videnoff says, "Musicians have been playing from paper for hundreds of years... I don't carry heavy scores anymore... It's just such a relief." This project is again a personal idea of ​​Boian Videnoff, created with a friend of him from the technology industry - Josef Tufan. Over 9 million of the funding comes from the European Union, and a total of over 22 million euros have been invested in the project. Almost everything from the standard repertoire has already been digitized. The goal now is to create a platform for young composers who can publish there, because today it is expensive to publish new works.

What does this talented, ambitious, amazingly energetic and charismatic musician believe in?

"I believe in love… between people. This is the thing I believe in the most – that with love the best things are achieved. I think that we always live in the future,” Boian says. “And more and more I try to somehow stop this thought process and say: ‘Look at what you have today. Be grateful for what you have!’. I can say that … I live the life that I want to live. And I am very happy with that. I make music with perhaps the greatest musicians that one can imagine – my childhood idols. I play with young musicians and such fantastic orchestras like here, in Sofia, who have a desire to make music and are ready to accept my ideas. And I have the opportunity to do such interesting projects like Enote, where I can express the entrepreneurial spirit that is in me. And I have a fantastic family and people who love me. So I think that's what I'm striving for and that is today."

Publication in English: Al. Markov

Photos: boianvidenoff.com, Facebook /Boian Videnoff, operasofia.bg, sofiaphilharmonic.com (V. Balevska), Facebook /Sofia National Opera and Ballet