Milanche, 82, Fills Tasmajdan Third Time, Novi Sad Next

Milanche Radosavljevic stepped onto the Tasmajdan stage again last night, September 2, in front of a packed venue in Belgrade. The singer is 82, and once more the crowd showed up in numbers that, by all accounts, justified every ticket sold.

He opened the concert with “Dao bih ovaj zivot” (“I’d Give This Life”), backed by Aleksandar Sofronijevic’s orchestra, which plays with him at every show. Cheers reportedly broke out across Tasmajdan from the very first bars, and thousands of fans sang along to his biggest hits. Earlier promotion for the same concert had also listed that same song under a slightly different title, “Dao bih ovo malo zivota” (“I’d Give This Little Life”), so both names were apparently in circulation.

Sources disagree on exactly which concert in the sequence this one was. Kurir and Grand count it as his third major concert at Tasmajdan. Novosti, on the other hand, calls it the fourth, counting his first concert separately from the trilogy that followed. The number is reported here as each outlet states it, rather than picking one version over the other.

Ilda Saulic marked ten years of marriage on stage

The biggest surprise of the night came from Ilda Saulic. The singer showed up to support Milanche on the very day she marked ten years of marriage, and the surprise did not stay confined to the audience. At one point, Ilda joined Milanche on stage and sang two songs, and her entrance was met with cheers and visible excitement. The crowd sang along with her, and the atmosphere, according to accounts from the scene, took on an extra emotional charge. The outlet had previously covered that same wedding anniversary in a piece about Ilda and her “I Said Yes.”

Backstage, Milanche also had the support of Dejan Cirkovic Cira, whom photographer Zoran Kuzmanovic Munja captured with the singer before he went on stage. Also listed among the guests was Viseslav Cuckovic, the singer’s cousin, who teaches music and accordion.

Milanche himself marked the concert announcement with a short message that, in many ways, sums up why he can still fill a stadium after so many decades on stage:

As long as my legs carry me and my voice serves me, I will sing to my people.

He said it while announcing his third concert at Tasmajdan, and last night the crowd answered him with a full stadium.

How the tickets sold out, and what comes next in Novi Sad

The ticket numbers alone tell a story. His first concert at Tasmajdan sold out completely. The second sold out in eight hours. The third was gone in just 25 minutes, a pace described as rare for the domestic concert scene.

The story does not end in Belgrade, though. Milanche Radosavljevic will also perform in Novi Sad on October 2, with tickets for that show going on sale today, September 3, starting at 1 PM, through the Tickets.rs website. If the sales pace from his last three Belgrade shows repeats itself, tickets for Novi Sad are unlikely to stay available for long.

For a singer who opened his first Tasmajdan concert just over a month ago, then followed it with a second and a third, the Novi Sad date is the next stop in a run that, judging by the crowd’s interest, is far from over.