Olga Gyuzeleva and the Bulgarian Cultural Elite from the Beginning of the 20th Century

Abstract

The name of Olga Gyuzeleva is usually mentioned in connection with the history of the Sofia Opera, as she is among its founders. In addition to being among the few female members of the intellectual elite and a participant in a revolutionary cultural endeavor, fate also connected her with one of the emblematic couples in Bulgarian literature at that time – Pencho Slaveykov and Mara Belcheva. Olga was the woman who left for Brunate in the spring of 1912 to share with Mara Belcheva the hardest months after the death of the poet. Olga Gyuzeleva was the youngest of the four daughters in the family of Stephanie Gyuzeleva and Ivan Gyuzelev. Similarly to her sister, she graduated in Dresden with a degree in music. After her return to Bulgaria, she devoted herself to versatile cultural activities - an opera singer, an actress, a pianist, a teacher, and an interpreter. In 1910 or 1911, Gyuzeleva married Major Krastyu Angelov – one of Mara Belcheva’s brothers. Valuable information about her life and activity is found in her personal archive, which has not been explored yet. In the 1917/1918 season, she was a full-time actress in the National Theatre, performing parties in the operas of Gounod, Bizet, Verdi, etc. At the same time, she was teaching private solo singing and piano lessons in Sofia and Varna. In 1925, she was wounded during the terrorist attack on St. Nedelya Church. She died lonely at the age of 91 in a nursing home in Kazanlak.