“September ’23” in Ruse and opera choruses for Karamanlis (1982–1983)

By the end of October 1982 the women’s sections had been filled with carefully chosen voices, but only two men had been taken on. On 21 October the choir privately marked Marin Chonev’s 50th birthday, and on 12 December, as part of Varna ’82 Culture Days, it gave a concert at the House of Amateur Arts for the 60th anniversary of the Soviet state and the conductor’s jubilee, conducted by Rositsa Shchereva.

Early in 1983 the Centre for Amateur Arts offered a place at the international competition in Cork, Ireland, but because of the 40-singer limit Chonev declined and proposed Tolosa, Spain instead – a proposal the Centre turned down. While Chonev was at a festival in Poznań with the Boys’ Choir, Morski Zvutsi learned Konstantin Iliev’s cantata “September ’23” for the 23rd March Music Days international festival in Ruse. On 26 February the choir hosted the Chamber Women’s Choir from Targovishte; on 9 March the Ruse Philharmonic’s conductor Alipi Naydenov worked with the singers, and the actor Danail Mishev coached the speaking chorus.

On 17 March the choir left for Ruse in two coaches and, after three rehearsals with the orchestra, opened the festival on 19 March 1983 at the Transport Workers’ House. The soloists were Emilia Maksimova and Dimitar Stanev, the narrator Georgi Stefanov. The performance, dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the September Uprising, was brilliant: Chonev was congratulated in person by the chairman of the Committee for Culture, Georgi Yordanov, and by Konstantin Iliev himself, and Naydenov thanked him again and again. A month later the choir celebrated the 60th birthday of its long-serving singer Yanko Uzunov.

Then came an unexpected task – a concert at the Palace of Culture and Sports for the visit of the Greek president Konstantinos Karamanlis at the invitation of Todor Zhivkov. Morski Zvutsi, the Varna Opera chorus and the Rodina choir from Ruse prepared choruses from Bizet’s “Carmen” and Verdi’s “Nabucco” with the Varna Philharmonic’s symphony orchestra under Ivan Marinov. The parts were copied in a hurry by Rositsa Shchereva and Stoyan Boychev (“Carmen”) and by Pushkova (“Nabucco”); the combined choir was prepared by the opera’s conductors Pushkova, Misirkov and Izmirliev. The concert on 26 April was performed to a high artistic standard.

On 11 May the choir sang at the opening of the May Choral Competition and, by tradition, hosted a student choir from Ankara; their joint concert was on 13 May. That same day came news that the choir’s new LP was in the shops. Radio Sofia proposed taking part in a radio competition in the GDR, and on 23 June television recorded Dobri Hristov’s “Rachenitsa” for a film about the Varna region. Half of the already small subsidy (10,000 leva) went on the Boys’ Choir’s trip to Poznań, which meant writing memos to the regional and municipal authorities. On 30 June, within Varna Summer ’83, the choir sang in the new concert hall of the renovated Naroden Flot House; the concert was broadcast live on the Horizont programme and went even better than the singers themselves had expected. On 4 July the two songs for the GDR competition were recorded.