Sava Centar flies to heaven: Gypsies opens the 33rd BELEF after five quiet years
The Belgrade Summer Festival BELEF opens on June 20 at the reopened Sava Centar with the long-running musical Gypsies Fly to Heaven from the Terazije Theatre, a production now approaching its 400th performance.
Fifteen minutes before 8 p.m., June 20, on the western plaza of the Sava Centar. The audience gathers in the particular Belgrade formation that only appears when a musical is staged outside the Terazije Theatre’s normal schedule.
The occasion is not routine. “Cigani lete u nebo” (Gypsies Fly to Heaven), the musical first performed on June 22, 2003 and never absent from the repertory since, this time opens the 33rd Belgrade Summer Festival, the longest cultural event on the capital’s summer calendar. The show is now approaching its 400th performance, which for a domestic production is not a modest jubilee.
The festival runs from June 20 to September 17. The Belgrade Festival Center (CEBEF), the organising body, is holding the full program for staged weekly announcements beginning in July. With the opening at the Sava Centar, reopened this season after a decade-long reconstruction, BELEF returns to one of its historic venues.
For a festival that has spent the last several years drifting between the Dom omladine, the Kombank Hall and open stages at Ada and Pioneer Park, that is a step back toward something settled. The festival’s director said it matters to the team that audiences know where BELEF is. In the context of the last five editions, that line sounds less like marketing and more like an acknowledgement.
”Gypsies Fly to Heaven” as an opener
The Terazije Theatre musical has a clear acting line-up:
- Ivan Bosiljcic as Loko
- Slobodanka Vlatkovic, Marko Markovic, Ivana Knezevic in the remaining roles
The show’s long life on stage is not accidental. It is a musical that, within the Serbian production landscape, solves several problems at once.
- A clear narrative built on the 1975 Soviet film by Emil Lotyanu, giving the viewer a stable emotional arc
- Romani music arranged for a theatre orchestra, which reads from the stage as spectacle without asking complex interpretation from the audience
- The chance for actors to sing, dance and act simultaneously, which is fundamental to the musical form, and rare to see honestly executed on a Serbian stage
Bosiljcic has spent the last two seasons building public visibility around the production, which for BELEF means a reliable ticket sale at the opening. The directorate is expecting both Sava Centar halls to sell out. Tickets are between 1,500 and 3,500 dinars, in line with last year’s festival prices.
What “Gypsies Fly to Heaven” is not
What is striking about this year’s opening is the choice of a show that is not new, not a premiere, not a festival production. “Gypsies Fly to Heaven” is an existing Terazije Theatre production performed regularly outside BELEF.
This is not a 2026 innovation. BELEF has been doing it for years. Financially understandable. Programmatically open to question.
If BELEF opens with a show audiences can see in the regular repertory, what makes it a festival? The directorate usually answers that BELEF is not strictly a producing institution but a programming one, meaning that it selects and contextualises existing productions.
That argument holds within the cultural policy of a city with limited funds, but it can also be re-examined. A festival running nearly three months ought to add something specific to a Belgrade summer calendar, when much of the audience is out of the city. The current program delivers that added value only partially.
Sava Centar as a venue
After reconstruction running from 2018 to 2025, the Sava Centar now operates with a new acoustic system, new lighting, and fully renewed furnishings. The main hall seats around 4,000 and has new walnut-wood counters.
Reactions are mixed. Some critics note that the new lighting equipment, designed by a Finnish firm, gives the audience too neutral a tone. Others find the acoustics now improved for musical programs, which matters for a musical.
The June 20 opening is the first major production in the new Sava Centar since the February reopening. The hall has so far hosted only smaller concerts, so the festival, along with its own program, carries an institutional function: opening the new phase of the Sava Centar before the full cultural public of the city.
Does BELEF still have a reason to exist?
The question this occasion opens is not malicious. It has followed the festival for decades. In its golden phase across the 1990s and early 2000s, BELEF was the platform that brought European troupes to Belgrade. Today the program is largely a rearrangement of existing domestic productions.
The directorate has understandable reasons. Budget ceilings that the city renews in shrinking figures. Reduced foreign-troupe touring because of exchange-rate pressures. A lack of venues that would allow riskier programming.
Opening with “Gypsies Fly to Heaven” is a smart audience decision. But by the fortieth jubilee, which arrives in only seven seasons, BELEF will have to define what exactly it does, before its own programmatic inertia leaves it without justification.
What do you think: can a summer city festival be just a collection of existing productions, or does it have to produce its own premieres?
