On 15–21 June, the European Foundation for Support of Culture, the Vojvodina Symphony Orchestra and the Serbian National Theatre held the OperArija International Music Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-biggest city, is located on the Danube in the north of the country. It was founded by Orthodox Serbs in 1694 and, already by the 18th–19th centuries. It had become a capital of culture and an important manufacturing centre; it was dubbed “Serbian Athens.” Today, Novi Sad is part of independent Serbia and has regained its status as capital of culture, being home to all of the region’s cultural treasures: museums, art galleries and architectural monuments. It should be noted that in 2021 Novi Sad will become Europe’s capital of culture.
The festival featured concerts by famous classical performers, such as Haik Kazazyan (Russia), winner of many international competitions, including the Tchaikovsky International Competition; Boris Andrianov (Russia), winner of the Zagreb International Festival and the Tchaikovsky International Competition; Boris Allakhverdyan (Russia), winner of many international competitions, the principal clarinet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the opera soprano Olga Peretyatko (Russia), winner of many international competitions, including the Ferruccio Tagliavini competition in Deutschlandberg, the BelCanto Opera Festival in Bad Wildbad, the DEBUT European Singing Competition in Bad Mergentheim; and others. The musicians performed together with Serbian orchestras: the Novi Sad Academy of Arts Symphony Orchestra and the Vojvodina Symphony Orchestra under the baton of world-famous conductors: Maestro Sergey Smbatyan, Honoured Artist of the Republic of Armenia, founder and Artistic Director of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra; Gergely Madaras (Hungary), Music Director Designate of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Music Director of the Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne, and Principal Conductor of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra; Gianluca Marciano (Italy), Principal Guest Conductor of the National Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus, Principal Conductor of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, who was also the Festival’s artistic director.
The concert programmes featured famous works by European composers.