BELEF Opens Tonight With a Beloved Terazije Musical

There is a moment in „Gypsies Fly to Heaven” when the entire cast tumbles toward the footlights, seemingly without order, and breaks into a number that has been shaking the Terazije Theatre stage for years. Anyone who has heard it live understands why this production has stayed on the repertoire for two full decades. Tonight that very show moves to Sava Centar, to strike the spark that lights up the 33rd Belgrade Summer Festival.

The opening is set for 8 p.m., and the choice of production is anything but accidental. „Gypsies Fly to Heaven”, built on motifs from the famous story about a freedom that refuses to be tamed, is one of those rare home-grown musicals that has passed the test of audiences and not merely of critics. The clearest proof that interest has not faded is the organizers’ own decision: capacity was expanded and an additional batch of tickets released for sale, because the first lot vanished faster than anyone expected.

What does BELEF actually offer this summer?

This year the festival runs from June 20 to September 22, a span that reaches far beyond a single gala night. More than 40 music, theatre and children’s programs are spread across three summer months, arranged so that the city is left without a program on hardly a single dead August afternoon. The patron is the City of Belgrade through its Secretariat for Culture, while the executive production is handled by CEBEF, a team with decades of work on this festival behind it.

What sets BELEF apart from the run of summer events is its stubborn breadth. This is not a matter of one genre or one audience. Children’s programs stand shoulder to shoulder with serious concert evenings, theatre productions alternate with musical ones, and the whole thing is held together by the idea that culture need not go on holiday alongside the city. In a context where summer repertoires are often reduced to repeating the safely profitable, this kind of festival sprawl feels almost defiant.

Why a musical for the opening

Opening a festival with a show that has been on the repertoire for 22 years carries a certain risk, since the audience knows exactly what it is getting. But that is also where the calculation lies. With this opening, the Terazije Theatre is not trying to surprise but to set a standard: tonight nothing new is being tested, tonight the audience is reminded why one goes to the theatre in summer at all. „Gypsies Fly to Heaven” carries both melancholy and euphoria, and it is precisely that duality that suits the tone of an opening meant to be festive and alive at once.

It is worth remembering that longevity on the repertoire is not the same as artistic inertia. A show that survives twenty-two seasons changes imperceptibly, because the cast that carries it and the audience that comes to it both change. What was once a discovery is now, for part of the crowd, already a kind of inheritance, a piece of personal theatre-going history. By opening BELEF with such a show, the festival deliberately places itself in that line of continuity rather than chasing the sensation of the moment.

If you are in Belgrade tonight and still unsure how to begin your festival summer, the question is really quite simple: will you hear the first bar of the 33rd BELEF live, or spend tomorrow listening to how it went?