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THE WORLD-FAMOUS ORIGINAL
Don Cossack Chorus Serge Jaroff

Bantcho Bantchevsky (Банчо Банчевский)
(May 5, 1906 in Lovech, Bulgaria - January 23, 1988 in New York)

He sang in the choir from about 1969/1970 to 1971/1972 as a baritone. Bantchevsky, a cheerful person, also worked as a singing teacher, translator (he spoke several languages), opera singer and actor in smaller roles. He can be seen in a close-up in the German feature film from 1970 "Heintje, my best friend". There he also speaks a few words. He is also pictured on the 1971 anniversary tour. He had a baritone voice, and as he spoke he lisped something.

Bantcho Bantchevsky was born in Lovech, about 90 miles northeast of the capital Sofia and one of the oldest towns in Bulgaria. According to Wikipedia, Lovech’s traditional culture of singing and dancing inspired Bantchevsky to attend Sofia Conservatory, where he learned to play the flute and piano and studied opera.

Bantchevsky performed on Sofia’s Rakovska Street, known as “Bulgaria’s Broadway,” but fled when the country joined with the Soviet Union during World War II. In the 1940s, he sang opera in Czechoslovakia and Vienna, and was a member of the Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff.

Wikipedia notes, “He also appeared in films and plays in Berlin, including a small part in a performance of Macbeth.”

Bantchevsky emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1950s. Encountering competition from younger, native-born performers, he turned to coaching other singers and to writing political satire for Radio Free Europe.

In addition to his native Bulgarian, Bantchevsky spoke English, German, French, Italian, and Russian. This gave him employment translating material for visiting opera singers. He regularly attended performances of the Metropolitan Opera, his orchestra seats typically provided by Met friends.

Bantchevsky had been in failing health. In early January 1988, he was hospitalized with a minor heart attack, but checked himself out after a week.

The David K. Frasier website specializes in tales of “people at their extremes and limits.” Frasier recounts that, “On the morning of January 23, 1988, Bantchevsky refused a friend’s dinner invitation with the comment that he could not eat because ‘I’m going to die tonight.’ Attending the Met’s matinee performance of Verdi’s opera Macbeth, Bantchevsky seated himself in the ‘Family Circle,’ the fifth and highest balcony in the opera house where desks are provided for patrons to study the score during the performance.”

“During the first intermission,” Frasier writes, “two ushers had to pull Bantchevsky away from the top railing where he was seated rocking slowly back and forth. Ten minutes into the second intermission, the singing coach plunged 80 feet from the top railing, bounced off a lower balcony rail, and mercifully landed on unoccupied seats ten rows from the back of the orchestra with a broken seat atop him.”

Frasier’ website offers a comment from an anonymous reader. In part: “I remember Bantcho vividly…. …on opening night in 1976 he invited me to watch the opera, Il Trovatore, from his par terre box. On that night he was resplendent in white tie and tails and with numerous medals and ribbons decorating his chest. He was knowledgeable and gregarious about the theater and especially the opera but his good humor was overlaid by a certain world-weary melancholy not uncommon in slavic aficionados of a certain age.”

“On the afternoon of January 23, 1988,” the commenter writes, “… I turned on the radio to find the Metropolitan Opera broadcast in progress but instead of Verdi’s Macbeth I heard the announcer, Peter Allen, obviously stalling and filling time. Somehow, as soon as the situation was reported, I knew who the victim was before they mentioned his name. I was shocked but not surprised.”