Presentation of the monograph “Reception of Traditional Chinese Opera Performances in Bulgaria” by Assoc. Prof. Miglena Tzenova, PhD, at the Sofia Music Weeks International Festival
On June 28, 2025, Saturday, at 6 pm, in the Music Studio (the building of Bulgaria Hall, 1 Aksakov Str.), within the Sofia Music Weeks International Festival, the book Reception of Traditional Chinese Opera Performances in Bulgaria will be presented (Sofia: Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2024. 606 p. ISBN: 978-619-7619-51-5). Prof. Nikolay Iordanov, DSc, Prof. Andronika Martonova, PhD, and Assoc. Prof. Stefka Venkova, PhD, from the Institute of Art Studies – BAS, as well as Prof. Milena Bratoeva, DSc, and Assoc. Prof. Antonia Tsankova, PhD, from Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski” will share their impressions, analyses, and assessments of the monograph. Admission is free.
Reception of Traditional Chinese Opera Performances in Bulgaria by Assoc. Prof. Miglena Tzenova, PhD, is the first monographic and multifaceted study on such problems in musicology. It is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations between Bulgaria and China. The first of two sections examines the relevance of the term “reception” for performances of traditional Chinese opera in Bulgaria. The definitions and evolution of the term in twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories in the fields of literary studies, linguistics, music, and theatre studies, as well as its entry into Chinese scientific research from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries into various arts through the term【接受】jieshou (reception) are studied in detail. The book looks back at the earliest precursors of fundamental ideas and concepts from theories of reception in written monuments of Chinese, Greek, and Indian culture, created between the 5th and 4th centuries BC and the 6th century AD. Musical-theoretical aspects of Chinese treatises related to the scales 《十二律》 Shi-er lu и 《五声音阶》 Wu sheng yin jie, methods of tuning Chinese traditional musical instruments, etc., are also presented in the book. A second section restores the chronology of the numerous performances of traditional Chinese opera in Bulgaria, which took place between 1952 and 2023, and interprets the cordial communication between these performances and the Bulgarian audience and critics in the 20th and 21st centuries. The following are also being studied: collaborations between Bulgarian and Chinese pedagogues and scientists in the performance of performances of a traditional Chinese opera in Bulgaria; interpretations of a traditional Chinese opera by Bulgarian directors, composers, scenographers, choreographers, performers, etc.; new Bulgarian and Bulgarian-Chinese projects in which elements of the traditional Chinese opera are interpreted. The study of traditional Chinese opera within the system of Bulgarian higher education is also examined: in lecture courses, practical classes, training performances, diplomas, scientific publications, dissertations, etc.
The book was awarded the Book of the Year Award for Musicological Creativity (category Scientific Monograph, Musical Theatre) by the Union of Bulgarian Composers, Musicologists Section (on May 16, 2025).
