The beginning of the final week of the 74th Dubrovnik Summer Festival will be marked by a big concert in front of the Cathedral, which will be held on Monday, 21 August at 9:30 p.m. by the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra with soprano Josipa Bilić, conducted by maestro Valentin Egel. The programme includes compositions by Antonín Dvořák, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ivan Violić.
The concert will open with Antonín Dvořák's symphonic poem The Water Goblin, inspired by the collection of ballads A Bouquet of Folk Legends by the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben, and continue with Mozart's composition Rejoice, be glad, which is rooted in a sacral text in Latin but also has the opulence of a real concert composition. These will be followed by the first performance of a piece by the Dubrovnik composer Ivan Violić, entitled Hommage, and the evening will end with Dvořák's Symphony no. 8, in G major, Op. 88, which Dvořák's biographer Hans-Hubert Schönzeler said "breathes the spirit of Vysoká, and when one walks in those forests surrounding Dvořák’s country home on a sunny summer’s day, with the birds singing and the leaves of trees rustling in a gentle breeze, one can virtually hear the music..."
The Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra regularly performs with top foreign and domestic soloists and is an essential part of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival programme every summer, and this one is no exception. This year, the DSO celebrates their 98th anniversary of active work, and for the concert in front of the Cathedral, will be conducted by Valentin Egel, chief conductor and music director of the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka. During his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar, he was the chief conductor of various student orchestras and a multiple winner of the Charlotte Krupp and Richard Wagner scholarships. As a guest conductor, he performed with numerous renowned orchestras and musicians, including Bruno Delepelaire, Fabrice Millischer, Reinhold Friedrich, and Maida Hundeling. Josipa Bilić had her professional opera debut as a scholarship holder of the Croatian National Theatre Opera in Zagreb. She was given the most prestigious Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra award, the Young Musician of the Year award, for her particularly noteworthy achievements as a soloist. For the role of Gretel in Humperdinck’s fairy tale opera Hansel and Gretel, conducted by Dawid Runtz, directed by Petra Radin and produced by the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, in 2021 she won the Croatian Theatre Award for an outstanding performance by young artists under 30 in opera.
Tickets for the concert are available via the festival website www.dubrovnik-festival.hr or the service www.ulaznice.hr, at the box office in the Festival Palace (Od Sigurate 1) every day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and in front of the DTS building (Vukovarska St) from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.