On 9 October, the Sofia Opera and Ballet opens its new season after an exceptional summer season marked by a lot of productions, performed on five open stages and attracting great interest from the audience. The Bulgarian opera Yana's Nine Brothers by the composer Lyubomir Pipkov will be the first performance for the season. It will launch the marking of the 130th anniversary since the constitution of the Sofia Opera and Ballet.

I really love black and white cinematography and I think it is appropriate for such a rough story to be dressed in a black and white narration. There is a special aesthetic in it, which I personally like very much, Bulgarian actor and director prof. Ivaylo Hristov says in an interview to Monitor.

Having two gramophones in front of you, vinyl records and playing those like instruments instead of just letting them run, wow, it is an incredible feeling! My passion for gramophones as musical instruments (scratches, cutting, etc.) was born when a friend of mine showed me footage of a European competition from the DMC series. Personally, I think that if you have not gone through gramophones and vinyl records, you cannot call yourself a DJ, Fabrizio Parisi says in an interview to Telegraph Media.

The unique coproduction of Giacomo Meyerbeer's L'Africaine by Deutsche Oper Berlin and Stara Zagora State Opera, whose shows were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, will make its Sofia debut on 6 October at Hall 1 of the National Palace of Culture. The incredible new production is the brainchild of world-renowned Bulgarian director Vera Nemirova and will make its Sofia stop in its full splendour with a magnificent cast that features Ivaylo Mihaylov (in the role of Vasco de Gama), Daniela Dyakova (Selika) and Besa Llugiqi (Ines). The show will be conducted by Maestro Ivaylo Krinchev.

For another year, Vienna Philharmonic will present its traditional Summer Night Concert to the lovers of classical music. The concert, which was scheduled for 21 May, will take place on 18 September. As usual, the concert will be held in the open, in the fabulous baroque gardens of Schoenbrunn Palace, but this time with much more limited audience.

The idea for Self-portraits predates the dramatic events of 2020 with the onset of Covid-19, the measures against the pandemic, the social isolation and the vast civil rights movement.

Goethe-Institut in Sofia announced on Tuesday that it is organising a poster competition dedicated to freedom, democracy and the role of art in modern society. Against the background of current events that continue to put democracy to the test, there arises a series of pressing questions about politics, freedom and the future. In this context, Goethe-Institut is asking questions related to art: where it is today, where it should be, and what role artists play in the political debate.

US film Nomadland has won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival, the first such event held with live audiences since the Covid-19 outbreak, news wires reported. The film, by Chinese-born Chloé Zhao, stars Frances McDormand as a widow who lives as a nomad after the 2008 crisis.

One of the most valuable traits of the Bulgarian national character, as far as such exists, is the ability to live along with the absurdity and to accept the paradoxes of human nature. This is not somethings that came out of good times. The logic of life is stronger than the logic of moral convictions, and survival has always been a priority for the Bulgarians, says writer Alek Popov in an interview to George Dimitrov.

After September 11: Images from Ground Zero documents the devastation and reconstruction of the World Trade Center in the aftermath of 11 September 2001. This extraordinary archive of pictures is the only existing photographic record of the attacks. Fenced off and classified as a crime scene, the area was closed to all photographers, and only scant information was available about the activities in the guarded enclosure that became known as the “forbidden city”. What happened at Ground Zero in the months after 9/11 remained a closely guarded secret, yet one photographer documented everything.