Ljubljana Summer festival
Summer is festival season across Central Europe with the warm days and nights bringing people out to hear music and experience performance and art. In Slovenia, it's time for the traditional Ljubljana Summer festival. Ksenija Samardzija Matul has more:
The beginnings of the Ljubljana Summer Festival date back to the 1950s and since then, it has featured a number of cultural, business, folklore and other events. Throughout the years the Summer Festivals in the Slovenian capital offered a variety of performances of domestic and foreign musicians and artists such as Dubravka Tomsic, Grace Bumbry, Jose Carreras, Celia Cruz and many others, as well as the world greatest symphony orchestras and some opera houses. In the last few years, up to 70 events of different genres have taken place at the Summer Festival.
This year the festival offers several great performances, opening with a very special highlight - a concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Tickets were already sold out a month before. Darko Brlek the artistic and managing director of the festival mentioned a few other highlights we can expect in the next two months:
"The 'Architecture of Silence' - a new dance project of Edward Clug will have its premiere during the festival. Edward Clug is well known to our public. And there are also the Slovenian Music days, the Vienna State Ballet, Elton John's musical Aida and many other artists, who will perform. Altogether there will be 109 performances until the end of August."
In his performance the Architecture of Silence dancer and choreographer Edward Clug of The Ballet of the Slovene National theatre in Maribor combines two musical works - Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Requiem for my Friend by the modern Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner. This season's program will also include open-air cinema at Ljubljana Castle, several exhibitions and other events. If you're looking for cultural highlights in Slovenia this summer there will be plenty of opportunities to enjoy live concerts and performances.
