The beginnings of opera in Bulgaria date only from the end of the 19th century. It's absence was most likely due to the country being under the control of the Ottoman Turks until the liberation of 1878. There was no significant musical development in earlier centuries when nationalistic opera styles were becoming established elsewhere in Europe.
The earliest operas were directly influenced by National Revival theater, at that time one of the principal manifestations of an awakened national consciousness. Considerable impetus also came from the Czech bandmasters who set up orchestras in Bulgaria immediately after the liberation of the country from the Turks in 1878, as well as from performances in the 80's and 90's by touring opera companies (nine Italian and two Russian). The subjects and plots were largely drawn from contemporary Bulgarian literary classics and from national history; but foreign operas performed in the country also influenced the development of musical theater. The first Bulgarian opera, Siromachkinya ("The Poor Woman", 1900) by Emanuil Manolov, despite the immaturity of its style, shows how the musical and theatrical forms common in the National Revival period were transformed into a new national genre. The transformation was complete by the time the works of Gerogi Atanasov began to appear. His operas follow the genre-specific pattern typical of the new school of operatic writing: a mixture of the everyday and the fantastic (Gergana, 1917), the historical (Borislav, 1911) and the legendary (Kosara, 1926). Gergana was particularly significant to the development of Bulgarian opera: its succession of colorful local scenes combined with spontaneous folklike music attracted large and enthusiastic audiences.
By the end of the 1920's there was a move away from folk styles towards various modern European musical and theatrical traditions, involving an increasingly professional approach. One important development was the adoption of the principles of Wagner's music dramas, as can be heard, for example, in Atanasov's last two operas, Kossara and Altzec (1930). In the 1930's a new generation of composers animated Bulgarian musical life. Educated in countries with rich, sophisticated musical traditions, these composers, with their broader cultural horizons and their professionalism, opened up new paths, especially in opera, and helped establish a true national identity and international recognition for their country's music. Pancho Vladigerov and Veselin Stoyanov responded in particular to the Austro-German tradition: Vladigerov collaborated with Max Reinhard, the stage director at the Deutsche Theater, Berlin; Vladigerov's keen receptivity to Wagner's orchestration and to the music of Strauss can readily be heard in his opera Tsar Kaloyan (1936). That work harks back to the traditions and spectacle of grand Romantic opera, with its elaborate plot, impressive crowd scenes and choruses, majestic processions and ballet episodes. Akin to it in style is Stoyanov"s Salambo (1940), again displaying the full splendor and lavishness of late Romantic opera.
In the same period there appeared a work which, because of its artistic merits and unique character, was as significant for Bulgaria as Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande was for France: Lyubomir Pipkov's Yaninite devet bratya ("Yana's Nine Borthers, 1937). The dramatic nature of this opera (comparable in style to Janacek's Jenufa and Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) is consistent with that of its subject-matter, the Turkish invasion of Bulgaria, and reveals expressionist and symbolist qualities. The emphasis on folk tradition - peasant songs and native verse - finds a parallel in Mussorgsky's works.
The development of Bulgarian opera after the 1944 socialist revolution reflected a new social and cultural environment, in that the customary freedom of treatment of the two most frequently encountered genres associated with the Romantic aesthetic - the heroic-historical opera and the comic opera based on everyday life - was now strictly proscribed. Compared with operas of the 1930's the musical language was much simplified: the works were pervaded by the tunes of mass revolutionary and urbanized peasant songs. The best-known operas from this period are Pipkov's Momchil (1948), Ivaylo by Marin Goleminov and Lud Gidiya ("The Madcap") by Parashkev Hadjiev (both 1959).
The early 1960's witnessed a move away from the inertia of rigid aesthetic norms and formal stereotypes. In contrast to the heroic and epic pseudo-Romantic operas of the 1940's and 50's, composers began to explore the more intimate psychological dimensions of drama, as in Hadjiev's Maistori ("The Masters", 1966), Yula by Krasimir Kyurkchiiski (1969), and Goleminov's Zakhary Zografat ("The Icon Painter Zakhary", 1972). The opera genre came to be regarded as a means whereby composers, through the use of self-parody, cinematic and Brechtian alienation techniques, could transcend the human and artistic limitations imposed on them by a totalitarian regime. In Pipkov's Antigona 43 (1963), the force of the drama is conveyed in the static, oratorio-like choral episodes, the more dynamic orchestral interludes acting as musical commentary. A free interplay of elements of opera, cantata and virtuoso instrumental ensemble music is evident in Lazar Nikolov's Prikovaniyat Prometey ("Prometheus Unbound", 1972), whose theme of ethical stoicism becomes a symbol of artistic dissidence under government dictatorship. The ideas of distance achieved through irony or the grotesque was the underlying principle governing many works of the next two decades, including Simeon Pironkov's Dobriyat chovek ot Sechuan ("The Good Person of Szechuan", 1969) and Pastrata ptiza ("The Colored Bird", 1980), Dimiter Hristov's Igra ("A Game", 1977) and Slatnata ribka ("The Golden Fish", 1982), and Bozhidar Spasov's Omag yaosaniyat ("The Bewitched", 1975).