The Sofia Opera House actively participated in the celebration of the year dedicated to languages with an event on Saturday.

The grand concert united four different nationalities of singers who presented arias from operas by Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Rossini, Maskani and Giordani. "In a world full of aggression and a climate of war, one cultural event is uniting the nations and creating a peaceful bridge through music," said Alesh Benda, director of the Czech Culture Institute.

According to him, music will unite the various languages, personalities and nations. Three cultural institutes in Sofia, the Italian, Czech and French, were the initiators of the project for cooperative opera singing, gathering famous opera singers from Italy, France, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

The week dedicated to Italy ended with the concert on Saturday. Alesandra Kanetieri (mezzo soprano) from Italy, Roman Yanal (Czech) and Frank Ferrari (France) were the guest soloists at the gala concert in the Sofia Opera House. The Bulgarian participants on the opera stage were Petya Ivanova, currently taught by the same professor who once taught Frank Ferrari in France, and Svetozar Rangelov (bass).

Yanal often goes back to his past while he was a student at the Music Academy Pancho Vladigerov here in Sofia. He vividly remembers his debut on stage in the Chamber Hall at the Opera House with Mozart's Don Juan. "I will be so excited to go back on the stage with the presentation of this music which is so symbolical to me," he said before the performance.

The Czech singer visited Nikola Gyuselev's school for teaching music in Rome and was impressed by the maestro. "The start of my career mattered so much and I am now building on the knowledge acquired in the Bulgarian school which gave me just the start I needed in order to become a good singer," he added.

Ferrari was very impressed by the relationships he saw between the people on the streets of Sofia, and also commented that his first time in Bulgaria would leave with him a great memory of the cooperation between the two cultures. "Being a baritone means I usually play the bad guy and I am so happy to be able to play a good guy in this gala concert," he said. The part of Enriko in Lucia D'Lammermoor is one of his favourites together with Amonastro from Aida, which he performed at the concert.

For him the main qualities of a good opera singer are "a good voice, a highly individual feeling for style, to feel at ease with the parts and good personal discipline." The part he performed on Saturday represented Mozart and Maskani's good guys who are quite simple, reliable, honest and pretty down to earth.

Characters like Don Juan add something to his personality because they represent personalities opposite to the characters he usually plays and are not mundane. "And besides, I sometimes need to go to bed on my own if I have had a tense day," he said with a smile.

Even though he looks like the singer taking the part of the villain at all times (black hair and eyes) he likes to show his vision of what is a positive character on stage and in life.