The second Italian tour: from Padua to the Sistine Chapel (1975)

Just a month after the competition the choir set off on another Italian tour. The singers knew how demanding Italian audiences were and kept rehearsing just as intensely, and with the prize money from the May competition they bought gifts for the officials they would meet and for their friends in an Italian choir in Padua. On 20 June Narodno Delo announced their departure, and on 21 June 1975 the singers were in Padua. The next morning they rehearsed in a hall of the basilica, learning the chorus of an Italian song about Padua; when the service ended they sang a few songs, unrehearsed, for their hosts.

The programme had two parts – European classics and Bulgarian composers. The first concert was in Camposampiero: the hall was full, Handel’s “Hallelujah” and the Bulgarian songs were cheered alike, and when the choir sang the chorus of the Padua song in Italian, the mayor and the president of the province joined the applause; the group leader, Zhivko Kirov, replied to the mayor’s welcome. The most important concert came the next evening at the Teatro Verdi in Padua – Handel’s “Hallelujah”, Cherubini’s Requiem and Bulgarian works including Aleksandar Tanev’s “Ya zalyubih kaso libe”, Lyubomir Pipkov’s “Nani mi nani, Damyancho” and Stefan Mutafchiev’s “Echo”. The following day the mayor said that “all Padua is talking” about the concert, and the choir’s friend Pio Capone praised the choice of programme.

On 25 June the group was in Rome. During the visit to the Sistine Chapel the audio guide was switched off for three minutes, and beneath Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement” the choir sang “Exultate justi” – a great honour, the author notes, since no choir other than the chapel’s own had sung there. The singers also performed several songs in the Vatican’s concert hall. In Florence, after an organ recital in Santa Croce, they sang “Exultate justi” and the Latvian sailors’ song, and in Pisa “Exultate justi” again in the cathedral. Torre del Lago Puccini, Viareggio, San Gimignano and Siena followed.

The final concert was in Lucca, Puccini’s home town, at the Teatro del Giglio, as the opening event of the 10th Lucca Musical Summer festival. In the packed hall the Latvian sailors’ song and “Nani mi nani, Damyancho” were encored, the choir sang songs it had not rehearsed for ages, and then a few more in the square outside. In Pio Capone’s words, the choir had exceeded his expectations despite the long journey. On the way back to Padua the singers saw Bologna. In Narodno Delo, Boris Hristov concluded that the visit had won Bulgaria “many new friends” in Italy.