In der Staatsoper brillierte die Bulgarin Elena Filipova als “Aida”- einer der hellsten Sterne am Sopran Himmel. Sie brachte nicht nur die temperamentvollste Dramatik mit, sondern auch einen lyrischen Schmelz der bis in traumhaft leistete Tongebungen reichte. Und da sie schön anzusehen ist und auch schauspielerisch hinreissend agierte, war sie eine perfekte Aida.

… übermetallischen Klang und starke Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten verfügt die schöne Sopranstimme von Elena Filipova, deren sicheren Technik auch unbequemen Koloraturen gewachsen ist, eine Donna Anna mit Zukunft. Sie spielt die “seria” Momente ihrer Rolle so überzeugend aus wie ihr Partner Robert Dean Smith, der dem Ottavio Standthaftigkeit und edle Lyrik seines rein klingenden Tenors zukommen lässt…

“To sing Verdi”- says Elena Filipova “You must have a voice that can do everything”

Without a pause, the Bulgarian soprano continues: “You have to be able to sing full voice and piano. You need a big legato and a big line. You need flexibility and, of course feeling.”

“If you have all that, you can sing Verdi. Singing Verdi is very difficult but it’s good for the voice and for the soul”

Filipova has sung Verdi in Major Opera houses in Germany, Austria and Italy in recent years. Earlier this month she sang the title role in Aida for Opera Pacific.

This evening, she sings her first Verdi heroine at the Academy of Music when she opens the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s season as Leonora in Il Trovatore.

Leonora is a passive figure fought over by the troubadour Manrico and his brother Count di Luna. Filipova says she enjoys the challenge of spinning out Leonora’s long breathed melodies but wishes her character were more dramatic.

“She is suffering, suffering, and suffering” says the soprano of the Spanish noble woman who is rescued from a convent by her lover and then swallows poison to save his life.

“In this opera, you sing and don’t move” she adds “I like to act, I feel more free when I am singing and acting”

Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini. Presented by Opera Australia,

with Agim Hushi and Elena Filipova, at the Opera House until February

…And despite Manon Lescaut’s odd road-movie come-morality tale storyline the music is classic Puccini.

Bulgarian soprano Elena Filipova played the beautiful but fatally Manon particularly well.

She was not only a believable character on stage- something which is not easy to pull off during some of the odder moments in the plot- but also has a stunning seductive voice. Her rendition of In Quelle Trine Morbide which is the party piece from this show was brilliantly executed.

-Stewart Hawkins

quite good-slim and handsome too- but the name that should be on everyone’s lips is that of Elena Filipova, who sings Tatiana.

Filipova is a Bulgarian making her American debut, and a more appropriately sensitive Tatiana would be hard to imagine. She too is young, slender and physically attractive. The thwarted lovers she and Quilico create have a credibility that heightens the era’s naturalism, while their voices, big and full of character, do justice to this tragedy of lost opportunities.

Filipova uses her voice with a great deal of lyrical imagination. During the letter scene in which Tatiana confesses her love for Onegin, it was tempting, but fruitless, to count the many ways in which her singing conveyed the mercurial symptoms of lovesickness. Fear, dreaminess, anxiety, shyness, exhilaration- all were evoked by a slight hesitation of a phrase or by gradations of pianissimo singing that reached the most touching levels.

-Lesley Valdes