Raina Kabaivanska was born in Burgass, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea.Her father was a veterinarian and a writer; also a talented inventor, as he designed and realized Balkantourist, the Bulgarian Tourist Association. Her mother was a professor of physics.. Raina always lived in Sofia and studied there. As a child she played the piano and sang accompanying herself on a small accordeon. As a student at the Sofia Conservatory she was a soloist in the Artistic Collective of the Workers’ Army and played and sang popular opera arias for soprano and mezzo.

For a few months she was a member of the chorus at the Sofia Opera House, as a soprano. In the final end-of-term production of the Conservatoory. In the end-of-term spectacle of her last Conservatory year she took part in Tatyana’s Leter Scene from Tchaykovsky’s Eugene Onyegin amd in the final scene of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.

In 1958 she obtained a 6-month scholarship from her government. She used it to finish her musical education in Italy. There she met Zita Fumagalli Riva, who had been a reputed verismo interpreter in the ‘10s and ‘20es, and studied with her. In Milan Raina had to suffer hardships to complete her studies. She made her stage debut at Vercelli as Giorgetta in Puccini’s Il tabarro in 1959. Soon after she ap-peared at minor opera houses in Northern Italy, such as Sanremo, Mantua, Trento and Bozen, singing Bohéme and Pagliacci. She then won a competition to enter the Young Singers’ School at la Scala, Milan, where she worked with conductors such as Antonio Tonini and Gianandrea Gavazzeni and stage producer Mario Frigerio. In 1961 she was considered mature enough to debut in Malipiero’s Torneo Notturno at the Piccola Scala, with Antonino Votto’s enthusiastic endorsement. In May 1962 she sang at the Scala “proper” as Agnese in Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, opposite Joan Sutherland.