Writer

Of foreign origin, Bulgarian
Excerpt from the book A Balcony in Nessebar, Irina Tonas
ISBN 978-954-9870-35-0

I was thirteen when I began singing with my aunt Maria, who was a soprano at the Sofia Opera, the city where I was born. I still remember hiding on all fours beneath her window just to listen to her sing. I would endlessly repeat the words of that music that made me tremble without understanding its meaning.

Everything moved me: the music, Maria’s voice, my aching knees, my whole body curled up in a ball — pure happiness… I did not know that I was learning the aria from Tosca, nor that this emotion would become the most powerful of my life. Like an oath, like a surge! Each time I ran toward the house repeating it, that aria transformed me into lightning. Maria had a beautiful voice, but she was unhappy in love: a love so pure and simple that would later end in tragedy, just like Tosca…

I have always been passionate about the mysteries of life, about symbolism, about history and art. Very early on, I made a pact with “strange people,” often “disturbing ones,” and this “disturbing strangeness,” both troubling and joyful, already became my own. Or rather, I discovered that I was seized by a passion that could only be called strange.

My destiny was to become strange, or simply to be different from others: to know how to play a little piano, to read two clefs in a musical score, to be extraordinarily sensitive to the sound of languages. Yet it was music that almost shook my reason, to the point that even the word “music” seemed inadequate to me.

Song of Songs — that might better evoke this language of languages, the most fascinating to my eyes, because it comes closest to the notes through which the scores I deciphered were written, and above all to what was at the origin of my secret.

So from strange I became a foreigner — without parentheses — in search of those “strange” emotions, always secret, like the delight of a prayer meant to help cross, at the right moment, the “secret door” with trust and expectation.

I always sang so lightly that I came to love difficulty more and more: it was very amusing to sing easily the things that were difficult for others. Each day was an adventure; each day I was a child growing up in wonder. I learned music at the same time as school and my gymnastics classes, while worrying about my mother’s health and my father’s absence.

Her long illness taught me to know my limits and my ability to endure daily suffering. Yet her immense inner world helped me fight for my dreams, as grand and inaccessible as they seemed. I was fascinated by her gaze and by the irresistible attraction she held over me, which stirred every day a whirlwind of hope — and I prayed in my arias:

“Lord, let her live!”

Our bond was total and lightning-like. At every moment I felt an immense need to love her, to touch her, to kiss her… She was so beautiful, so wonderful. Each time I left to sing she would say:

“Go! Do not worry about me, I will be here.”

Her acute arthritis often kept her in bed, yet her words were filled with such sweetness and elegance that I always left with wings on my back, carrying me ever higher. My father was present in thought and through his letters. I dreamed of meeting a man like him — tall and handsome, with dark cropped hair, with eyes so black and deep that he could make himself understood without saying a single word.

His burning, penetrating gaze still follows me, and it is thanks to him that I built a personality as strong as rock. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to become an opera singer.

I was obsessed and tormented by a dilemma: to remain in Bulgaria without a future, or to leave and devote myself body and soul to my love of singing. There was no hesitation, no choice. I left, and everything became possible. This passion grew day by day into a terrifying emotion — a fantasy I created around my musical scores.

I no longer lived in calm; I lived only for singing and for my son. I drew and wrote poems. I buried my Bulgarian songs deep within myself along with my father’s farewell; I no longer wanted to relive the torture of that separation. I left behind my land in flames…