Rome is music and pasta

Please meet Tanya Kalimerova, a Bulgarian woman in Rome

She went to Rome 24 years ago to fall in love with this Italian city, with the Italians and their music. What brought her there was her passion for opera music – the music which erupts volcanically and spills its lava on the whole Apennine, like the Etna. Tanya Kalimerova was 24 then. But had a solid grounding in music from the Secondary School of Music in Sofia, where she studied under the famous prima of the Vienna Opera Elizabeth Rutgers. Later she added a year’s training with Prof. Maria Brand in Vienna.

Felini or music

Franco Zefirelli personally chose her for his film La Traviata. “We worked for five months in the Cine Town. We had to be there from 5 in the morning for makeup and hairstyling until 12 at night. Very tense and very interesting. The main parts were performed by Placido Domingo and Theresa Stratas, so great artists that the contact with them and Franco Zefirelli was an incredible stimulus for us.” Having seen her during shooting, Felini offered her to take part in his legendary film The Ship is Sailing. But the shooting of the film started immediately. The people from the Conservatory told her: “If you want to devote yourself to the cinema, it’s okay with us. But you are a singer and should be keen on singing.” Give up Felini? Yes. “I did what I felt I should do.”

Tanya in Franco Zefirelli’s Traviata

Macaroni jewels!

How come the Italians had not thought of it – to make jewels of macaroni? But the Bulgarian opera singer Tanya Kalimerova, living for the past 22 years in Rome, got the idea to mix textile with Italian pasta. And this brought her fame both in Italy and abroad. Apart from jewels she makes small plastics. She placed the necklaces, brooches, earrings and rings next to her plastic compositions. The golden, blue and rose textile fibres are combined with pasta in the form of snails, puretti, butterflies, etc. and spaghetti, of course. So much imagination cannot but evoke admiration.