The Ljubljana Festival is the main summer festival in Slovenia. One of the oldest festivals in Ljubljana, it has its roots in the first Tourist Week, organized by the Ljubljana Tourist Society in 1952. Since that time the festival has outgrown the character of a local tourist event featuring folklore, sport, and economic activities, and has developed into a renowned international summer event which offers its ever-growing number of local and foreign visitors a variety of music, theatre and dance performances by leading domestic and international artists. Between 70 and 80 events ranging from concerts of classical and jazz music to performances of opera, theatre and ballet take place over the two months of the Ljubljana Festival, attracting a total audience of nearly 80,000 spectators. The Ljubljana Summer Festival is a festival held between July and August in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
It attracts notable opera stars, ballet and theatre performers and also eminent rock and jazz musicians internationally who perform at the festival. The Ljubljana Summer Festival, with its long history and tradition of presenting premier artistic events, contributes significantly to the cultural life of Ljubljana. Each year, its wide and varied programme of events includes from 70 to 80 concerts and opera and ballet performances attended by around 80,000 people from home and abroad. The highlights of previous years’ festivals have included Russia’s State Academic Bolshoi Theatre’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, two concerts by the orchestra and choir of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the famous Valery Gergiev, a performance by Russian Cossacks, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet staged by Tomaž Pandur and performed by Madrid’s Teatro Español, to mention just a few.
Summer Festival 2011
On the first of August, a mini-festival dedicated to Franz Liszt will be brought to life. The festival will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of this great artist. Since Liszt was the first that dedicated his musical evenings entirely to Beethoven’s opus, the first of four concerts begins with Beethoven with the pianist Peter Zoltan. A varied selection of songs follows in mainly piano compositions, but not only. You will have the opportunity to hear two superb pianists, Ivana Skrta Nino Prešiček and one of the most prestigious world-renowned ensembles, the Hungarian Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, at the end of the festival, on 16th August in the Slovenian Philharmonic.
Ljubljana Summer Festival
Date: 1 July 2011 – 31 August 2011
Date description:
July-August TBC.
Website:
www.ljubljanafestival.si
Ljubljana’s stages fill with performers from around the world and the city’s population swells.
Venue name:
Various venues.