Croatia turns into a festival mecca in the summer, and it's hard to say pick a favourite from the immense number of music, theatre and dance festivals taking place along the coast. We can definitely state, though, that Dubrovnik Summer Festival (Dubrovačke ljetne igre) is considered one of the most distinguished cultural manifestations on the Adriatic.
The 68th edition of the festival will feature around thirty musical, theatrical and ballet programmes, and here's the good news: tickets are already availabe online so you wouldn't have to worry two months from now about scoring a couple of remaining seats last minute.
Tickets are available on the official website dubrovnik-festival.hr and on ulaznice.hr. You'll get a 10% discount if you purchase your tickets using Maestro or Mastercard, and in case your order amounts to a total of 500 kuna or more, there's also a 30% discount voucher for festival souvenirs.
What's on the repertoire? First of all, there are two repeat productions of critically acclaimed plays, La Bottega dell' Caffé (dir. Vinko Brešan), and Othello (dir. Ivica Boban) that got the Orlando Award for Best Play in 2016.
The capital is visiting with two plays: Hinkemann by the Zagreb Youth Theatre (dir. Igor Vuk Torbica) and the famous ballet Swan Lake (dir. Vladimir Malakhov), coming from the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb.
If you're in for some music, there's the legendary Carmina Burana which will be performed as part of the opening ceremony on 11 July, and the closing Gala Concert featuring the last year's Music Award winner Aleksey Semenenko. Numerous concerts are taking place between the opening and the grand finale, including the violin recital by Stefan Milenkovich, piano recitals by Lukáš Vondráček, and the first Croatian performance by Zara McFarlane and her Quartet at the Revelin Fort.
Tickets are available for all listed performances, making up only a small part of this year's fantastic programme. You can see the detailed schedule here, and tickets for more events will be made available in June!
