Leontina Arditi in the one-man performance 'Daemon'

This is a photo of me in a spectacular scene of the one-man performance 'Daemon' by Lermontov, completed in 1957 for the Army Theater in Sofia.

This was my first attempt to work as an actress and a stage director. The dress rehearsal was on the stage of the Jewish library club in Sofia, which is in Bet Am, the Jewish Cultural Center. The musical score, which I selected for the performance, was by [Nikolai] Rimsky-Korsakov and [Charles] Gounod. The performance was in two parts: 'Tambov's Paymistress', a very amiable story of a man who gambles his wife away, and Lermontov's 'Daemon'. I have played 'Daemon' over 90 times, which is a great success for a one man-performance.

The first person who gave a one-man recital in Bulgaria was the actress Slavka Slavova with 'You Can Endlessly Recount for Mothers' based on a piece by Maxim Gorky. Those days in Bulgaria such performances which represented the so-called 'theater with one actor' were a very rare occasion. The following were the actors Spas Dzhonev with 'Song of the Songs' and Tanya Masalitinova with 'Anna Karenina'. And I was the fourth person, namely with Lermontov's 'Daemon'.