After BELEF Opens, Free Concerts at Princess Ljubica's Residence

There is something almost stubborn in the idea that, after the grand stage of the Sava Centre, after the lights of a musical and the noise of an orchestra, a festival should retreat into the courtyard of an old house with thick walls and low vaults. Here, at Princess Ljubica’s Residence, where the air is cooler than outside and where every note takes on a different weight, the 33rd Belgrade Summer Festival continues its course this week. The premiere opening, the musical “Gypsies Fly to Heaven” performed on June 20, was a loud announcement; what follows is the quieter, chamber portion of the program, the part usually remembered longest.

The Residence was built in 1831 for the wife of Prince Milos and their children, the future rulers Milan and Mihailo, and today it functions as a museum space under the Belgrade City Museum. The acoustics of such a building are not concert-grade in the technical sense, but they are experiential: the music is heard in rooms where people once lived, which lends the program an intimacy that large halls cannot, by definition, offer. That is precisely why the organizers’ decision to place the chamber concerts here is more than logistics; it is a dramaturgical move.

What is actually on the bill this week?

On Tuesday, June 23 at 8.30 p.m., the Helenia ensemble performs a program titled “On the Wings of Serbian Cultural Heritage.” The title alone suggests a repertoire turned toward domestic tradition, which in a festival context is not mere nostalgia but an attempt to treat tradition as living, performable material rather than a museum exhibit. A day later, on Wednesday, June 24 at 6 p.m., comes the piano recital by Aleksandar Jovcic, held within the “Faculty of Music at BELEF” series, a collaboration between the festival and the Faculty of Music. Both concerts have free admission.

That phrase, free admission, deserves not to be glossed over. Classical and chamber music here is often perceived as a closed circle, as something assumed not to be for everyone. A festival that offers such a program at no cost, and in a setting that is itself a reason to come, quietly dismantles that assumption. This is not a discount; it is a gesture of opening.

A festival that lasts all summer

What sets the 33rd BELEF apart from one-off events is its length and breadth. The program runs all the way to September 22 and encompasses more than forty different events, from theatre and music to exhibitions and interdisciplinary formats. Within that span, the concerts at the Residence are only one thread, but one that illustrates the festival’s ambition well: to use the city itself as a stage, to keep culture from being confined to a single address and instead scatter it across spaces that already carry their own story.

It is also worth noting that on June 25 the program features the trio Ensemble Liaison from Australia, which shows that the chamber portion of the festival is not turned exclusively toward the domestic repertoire but also seeks dialogue with the international scene. That balance between local heritage and visiting performers is what gives a summer festival a seriousness beyond its seasonal character.

In the end, the simplest question is the most important one: when music is offered to you in a building nearly two centuries old, with no ticket and no obligation, what is really keeping you from coming?