RIJEKA SUMMER NIGHTS 2017 – from 30 June until 21 July 2017

TIME FOR DECISIONS!

The title of this year’s Rijeka Summer Nights cannot be a more direct message than it is, a twofold one.

The message being that the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc is ready for any decision on the future of the Summer Festival except for the one that would cancel it, namely, the Theatre sees new perspectives and has specific proposals.

It is also a message to all involved in the funding of the Summer Festival to join the discussion, decide and take on their part of responsibility for the future of the Rijeka Summer Nights.

In the last two years we tested a model of programme and organisational expansion of the Festival cooperating with all of the cultural institutions in the City of Rijeka and a number of them in the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County. Paradoxically, a lasting and fair cooperation has been established with the Opatija Festival only. It is the third consecutive season that on the stage of the Opatija Open Air Theatre we are realizing the most ambitious project of this year’s Rijeka Summer Nights, the anniversary marking Aida. It was last year that we had agreed to have the exchange of guest concerts with the Osor Musical Evenings (keeping within the County framework) when the former Minister, with whose name we do not want to spoil this introduction, undermined the cooperation.

On the other hand, the support of those responsible for the funding of the Rijeka Summer Nights programme has never been lower. However, it is clear to us that if we were to introduce the Summer Nights Festival programme speaking of the concept and the model, organization and funding, this would immediately destroy the willingness of spectators who in July have to choose between the beach or the entertainment and folk manifestations in the vicinity of Rijeka and the Rijeka Summer Nights Festival itself, which persistently refuses to give in to the popular entertainment believing that it is also in the summer that art needs to have its – breakwater. This is why we are going to devote a special session of the popular Theatre Parliament to the making of decisions on the future of the Rijeka Summer Nights Festival. This Theatre Parliament session, open to all those interested as well as those that are responsible, will be held on 6^th July.

Meanwhile, we have prepared a varied programme for both our loyal and new audience of the Rijeka CNT Summer Nights Festival, enabling the spectators of all generations, attitudes and expectations to find something of their liking, though not just in passing. The time for decisions is also there for our audience. So, here you are, from comedy to tragedy, from the classical to the modern, from the theatre for children to that forbidden for those under the age of eighteen, from ballet solos to the opera spectacle, or, to make a long story short – from the Turbofolk to the Aida. This is the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc. These are our Rijeka Summer Nights.

Marin Blažević, General Manager and Artistic Director of the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc in Rijeka